Sunborn
by Bladesworn
Summary: Hiatus / All Annat Sunborn ever really wanted was to serve in her father's footsteps as a Paladin. Fate and the high court of Silvermoon, however, had some other ideas.
1. Bladesworn's Foreword

Though it has of late been bandied about as the fancy of an apostate writer seeking to "cash in" on the tale, this chronicle is as much a record of events as it is a story. I have committed myself to exhaustive research and interviewed as many possible as were present to the events in question, in the hopes of presenting the past in as accurate, complete and whole a state as mortally possible. Where able, I have included excerpts of firsthand accounts, many from other credible and verified sources; to this end I owe my utmost thanks to Ranger-General Halduron Brightwing and the Farstriders, Matriarch Lady Liadrin and her Blood Knights, and the team of magisters and scholars responsible for _The Diary of Sangrias Stillblade _and _The Sunborn Correspondences: Missives of a Noble House_. Without their cooperation and previous invaluable groundbreaking, I would be unable to provide you with as many insights as to the character of the members of House Sunborn and those affiliated with them. My thanks is also extended to the many whose words and experiences make up the the substance of this tale; too often we forget, in the pursuit of academic truths, that the lore we read and the tales that we preserve for posterity to learn from oft contain more than the usual accorded grain of truth. That the people who _lived_ this story and survived to tell of it were gracious enough to share it with me, in their own words, is an incredible and priceless gift, and one I do not intend to squander. May my meager efforts here be enough to honor their sacrifices.

There will, of course, always be disbelievers and dissenters, especially among the high court at Silvermoon; they as any other are free to peruse this account and draw their own conclusions from the words therein. Let them do so - this text will withstand their scrutiny unflinchingly. The writing of it was a journey in itself, and after encountering the people to whom these events transpired, after seeing the Brokenblade itself and holding it in my hands, I have no doubt left within my soul that every word I have written here is true. Would that all such who hear the stories of the heroes of generations past felt such wonder, such awe, such respect for their hardships and losses. Being a lowly scribe, I myself may not have earned such regard, but these names recorded here most assuredly have. From our safe vantage point of the here and now, dear reader, I beg of you this only: accord them the honors they have earned, in spilling their blood and tears in the past. Were you in their place, would you desire anything less?

Elias Bladesworn

Scholar-Knight of Kalimdor, Liasion to Silvermoon City, Lord Historian of Azshara.


	2. The Message

_"The Lady Matriarch, and Lord Bloodvalor, whom Father says followed her from the priesthood, say that the Light has abandoned our people. Even a year after I first heard them speak it, that sentiment had never seemed truer than when I crossed the mountain pass between fallen Lordaeron and the Ghostlands, and saw the Plaguelands for the first time. The mountains must have protected Quel'thalas from the worst of the Scourge's blight, sparing our homeland except for the black mark of the Dead Scar. I had thought the Ghostlands were a tragic place, a sad note attesting to the former glory of our kingdom, but Val, when we rode the High Road from Southgate Pass to Light's Hope Chapel, I knew true sorrow. We were lucky, brother. We were so very fortunate, to lose only the Sunwell and the city of our birth to Arthas and his army. The destruction wrought upon Lordaeron makes me weep even now, for seeing the bleakness of this land, I know in my heart of hearts that the Light has truly forsaken us all."_

- Annat Sunborn, in a letter to her brother, Val Sunborn, written in her first year of duty in the Eastern Plaguelands. Excerpted from _The Sunborn Correspondences._

* * *

_The morn the message came, she dreamed of the flight from Andilien._

_Running, running, endless running through the night - the grass sped by beneath her feet until it was a solid emerald mass, a blur of tripping and sprinting with Father's hand tightly clasping hers, so that she would not lose him in the shadows. The frenzied clash of steel and the roar of felfire chased at their heels from Andilien southward, past the march of animate bones and building-sized abominations. Once, glancing west as they passed the army, she thought she glimpsed Arthas himself at the head of the dark parade, a glittering being both terrible and beautiful. Whether it was a child's flight of fancy or a witnessed truth, it seared itself upon her soul. _

_In life as the Sunborn clan passed, they did so miraculously unscented, able by Father's timing and a goodly amount of luck to make it safely to the mountains south of Quel'thalas and cower there, out of reach and hidden from Arthas's army. In the dream, however, the last King of Lordaeron halts the march, one arm rising slowly, stately, regal as he turns. Frostmourne sings in his other hand and she can hear its siren-song as Arthas comes about like a mighty warship, the icy blue seduction of the runeblade searching for her, searching for the soul belonging to the new pair of ears that can hear its cries._

_She sees him turn to her and her family as she looks back, and suddenly in the dream, she is no longer a child but a woman grown, and they are alone and she is terrified; there is nothing that separates her from the Lich King and his army, because distance is as nothing to him, walls are as nothing, power as nothing. He traps her eyes in his and she sees him smile, pretty and sharp like shards of glittering glass. The cold of Northrend lances through her soul and she is pinned like a butterfly for display, every sin of her exposed, every flaw brought to light, every dark impulse carefully cultivated, like a black-petaled rose before the diligent gardener. He knows her utterly in that moment, and what a knight she would make, if sworn into his service, what a lovely and terrifying spectre of Death she would become! He would grant her ultimate power, if only she would bind unto him her loyalty; he would put eternal end to the gnawing hunger in her body, if only she would gift unto him her soul._

_Shivering powerlessly under his gaze, the darkest part of her roused and tempted by his unspoken offer, she knows with the absolute certainty of the damned that all he has to do is beckon, and to his side she will go._

_He reaches for her with his palm upraised as if to bid her take his hand, and he says her name._

This time, like every time before it, she woke, basted in chilled sweat and the utter fear that one day, she would not find it merely a dream.

Dawn in the Plaguelands, or such as dawn was in this cursed land, at any rate. There were no windows in her broom-closet quarters, no feeble rays of sunlight to herald the approach of day, but after four years at Light's Hope she was thoroughly attuned to the outpost's schedule, and could not have slept any later had she desired it. The sounds of the morning trickled under the door: others moving about in the church-turned-shelter, the night shift trundling in for their well-earned rest, the early risers shaving molecule-thin slices from their hoarded rations to them serve as breakfast. At Light's Hope Chapel, one either rose with the sun, when the morning meal was prepared, or one starved until midday.

She groaned low, threw an arm over her eyes, shielding them from the nonexistent light. There were advantages to having a closet with a door for her quarters, such as being allowed the illusion of privilege, a bit of privacy and an allegedly cozy cot she needn't share with anyone else, but it was also a reminder of how desperately she was unwelcome here. Even after so long serving alongside the Argent Dawn in her father's stead, she was quartered separately, socially isolated at meals, and had made only a handful of friends (and far more numerous enemies) among those stationed here. Some mornings, she would have been glad to share a pallet in the common area that had once been the nave of the church, if she hadn't thought she might have had her throat slit in the night for her trouble.

The unique acoustics of the broom closet, for example, amplified every stomping bootstep and muffled voice, until in the cacophony of the small area she would have eventually been forced to rise from bed in any wise, merely to prevent her going stark raving mad.

The candle and firestriker were found in the dark without fumbling, precisely where she'd left them on the floor; she'd never quite mastered her father's trick of simply lighting the wick with holy fire pulled from Light knew where, and thus was relegated to far more mortal means of combating the shadows. The candle, once lit, burned merrily in its little metal tray, revealing the contents of the closet beyond the cramped little cot. Her boots were placed neatly under the foot of the bed, and the armor of her trade was stacked and squeezed in cleverly organized ways along the shelves that dominated the upper half of the closet; she was not tall, but she had learned the hard way to be very, very careful when sitting up straight from the comfort of her bed. The Sin'dorei Warblade glittered bluely where it hung on the hook on the back of the closet door, the multicoloured steel as always fascinating by candlelight. The sword was nearly as long as she was tall, and some members of the Argent Dawn had looked askance at her when first she bore the blade, but after seeing her cleave Scourge-born monstrosities in twain with the weapon, they had stopped doubting her prowess, at least in her presence.

A mirror the approximate size and shape of a dinnerplate hung from a bent nail below the shelves, and with the aid of this she finger-combed her hair, attempting some semblance of neatness. Like most of her kind, she had grown her hair freely from birth, but when Father died she had cut it all out of grief, and the long tail of it lay buried with the Shard and what little of him the Scourge had left behind when they ate him. In the years since his death she had again let it grow unchecked. The shaggy mess was now long enough to require pins when she tucked it up into a bun, and she squinted and frowned at her reflection in the mirror, like every morning considering hacking the whole inconvenient mane off again. And, like every morning, she decided against it, took up her ghostwood hairpins, and twisted her Sunborn scarlet hair into something that vaguely resembled a battlefield updo. It would hold for the day's work. That much was all she required.

The women of the court would have been appalled. The very thought made her mouth curve in the first sincere smile in days.

In that small space she dressed and donned her pearl-white armor, shrugging off the ennui of sleep that had accumulated in her limbs, thinking of how outraged the jewelled and puffed-up harpies of the Noble Court of Silvermoon would have objected, had she walked among them that morning. Annat Sunborn, they would hiss in scandalized voices, filthy with dirt and muck from playing soldier in the south. How _unseemly._

Once such words might have hurt her, when she was young and still innocent, before the war had come to Quel'thalas nearly five years prior. Now, from the vantage point of a wordly nineteen, she only sneered at the imagined choir of courtier-vultures and envisioned how _they_ would look after a mere week at Light's Hope, dressed in their fine robes with their so-called civilized manners. The nobles of the high court were beautiful predators, pretty to look upon, but would not hesitate to slit the throat of one who stood in their way. There were good reasons the Farstriders distanced themselves as much as possible from the antics of the ruling class, and the Blood Knights participated only as much as was required by their station. There were better enemies to fight than the ones who bore a face like your own, a deceptively gentle manner and a smile like shards of glass.

Her mind echoed with the memory of the fading dream, the Lich King's brilliant, mad smile, and something deep within her pulsed in time with her fear. Her amusement banished, she shivered again and hurried to dress, lacing her boots onto her feet and blowing out the cheerful candle before standing to face the day.

The closet of her quarters opened up into the narrow hall that connected it, the vestry-turned-armory, the sacristy-turned-kitchen and the nave of the church. The wood paneling of the walls and floor was shiny with the passage of a thousand holy men and women, and the less than holy who now fought here. The kitchen was the undisputed domain of the former innkeeper Jessica Chambers, the armory sole province of Quartermaster Breechlock, and the closet belonged to Annat, but the corridor was open territory, and blocking much of it was Korfax, waiting patiently in the lightening dimness afforded by the hallway's single tiny window. Korfax was, mildly put, a mountain of a man, especially for a human; tall and broad, he had to bow his raven-haired head somewhat to avoid smacking himself on the exposed rafters of the hall, and when stirred to anger wielded a massive axe that could have felled any mere tree in one stroke. His armor made a jagged silhouette in the dawnlight from where he waited, arms folded across his barrel chest, the bladed pauldrons of his shoulderpads particularly impressive and warlike when one could not see their iridescent, opaline colours. He was the chosen Champion of the Brotherhood of the Light, a splinter group within the Argent Dawn itself, and many were the warriors who had made the mistake of believing that the large man was stupid as well as strong. Korfax was in truth articulate and impassioned, if a touch rude to those who assumed that size of frame equalled an inversely sized intelligence, and a more steady arm or heart could not be found within the confines of Light's Hope Chapel.

Annat, who knew a thing or two about the deception of appearances and rarely made such assumptions, had found in him a loyal friend, but not oft one to wait outside her veritable doorstep in the dawning light. He was content to wait until she addressed him first, flicking his grey eyes to meet her pale jade ones. She had to crane her neck to do so, which consternated her - she was short for a blood elf, and the Champion towered over her.

"Yes?" The Common tongue was a relic of her father's teachings, but a useful one, and one painstakingly honed to fluency through the years she had been stationed among the Argent Dawn. The Duke and Bettina insisted she still had a strange accent in the language, but Korfax had never spoken such opinions, if he held them at all.

"A rider has come from the west, bearing a courier's armband on his sleeve," said he, and his voice rumbled basso-profundo in her chest, like distant thunder. She felt her eyebrows arch in interest. Rare enough these days were couriers from outside the Plaguelands - so many that were sent did not make the journey, and even supplies caravans needed excessively heavy guard to see the Argent Dawn kept in food and clean water. But she could have discovered the presence of the courier on her own. Why instead had the Champion lain in wait to waylay her?

"There must be something further to it if you felt need to inform me yourself, Korfax."

"The armband is not the only thing he bears." He exhaled sharply as he pushed off the wall, ducked his head to avoid a beam, let his arms fall down to hang at his sides. One hand itched briefly in reflex over the handle of his holstered battleaxe. "He is one of your people, and carries their banner, with the white flag of truce tied to the pennant. He _demands_," and here his tone turned quite droll, as though the very notion were the highest comedy, "that his niece be summoned forth to speak with him, and will talk to no other. As you are the only one of Quel'thalas here still living, I assume that he means you."

He tilted his head and studied her quite curiously. She herself was far less articulate, her mouth gaping for a few heartbeats, like a beached fish. "Uncle Mehlar?" she said at last, soberly, any remaining vestiges of sleep washed away as thoroughly as if he had thrown a bucket of cold water over her. "Are you certain?"

He shrugged. The motion brought the blades of his pauldrons perilously close to giving him a premature haircut. "One blood elf is as another to me." He turned as though to precede her down the corridor, then paused in careful thought, adding quietly, "He has been here an hour, and must have ridden through the night to get here when he did. Commander Dawnbringer is in a fine fit of temper over his antics, and wishes him gone as swiftly as possible."

"But not swiftly enough to merit dragging me from my bed before dawn?" Annat grinned up at him. Korfax returned it before turning to tread down the hall, his teeth very white and even in his lined face.

"Even in temper, my lord Commander is not above attempting to instill the virtue of patience in those who are unduly prideful."

"I will see to him," Annat assured, following in the giant man's shadow. "He will be gone within the hour if I needs must drag him from Light's Hope with my own hands. Light only knows what kind of attention such a commotion will attract. I wish him gone as ardently as you do."

Reaching the end of the small corridor and the doorway to the nave, Korfax turned again and set a hand the size of one of her horse's hooves upon her shoulder. "Light bless you, Lady Sunborn."

"It's Annat, remember?" she said, forcing a smile for his benefit. The honorific rang hollow in her soul, reminder of all she that she was when not counted simply as a paladin, or even as a member of the Blood Knights under Liadrin. "There are no titles between us, my friend."

That made Korfax smile, at least. "Annat, then. See to your messenger - I return to my post." He turned them and ducked through the door into the nave, treading through the common area with bootsteps fit to shake the windows from their moorings. Annat smiled dully in his wake, waiting in the shadow of the doorway until his footsteps melded with the noise of the morning and became indistinguishable. The morning argument was already well under way, the representatives of the Dawn, the Brotherhood and the Scarlet Crusade sitting at table, locking horns over their breakfasts as to the course the eradication of the Scourge should take. Scarlet Commander Marjhan had already started shrilly in on her contention that locating the Ashbringer was the only hope for destroying the undead threat once and for all; Korfax's good Commander, Marjhan's staunch opponent on the matter, was as Korfax said already in fine temper, and seemed from the tone of his ripostes in no mood for Marjhan's remonstrations.

Annat tarried a moment more in the safety of the hallway, considering retreat back to her room, but in the end, it seemed the coward's path, and the courier bearing Silvermoon's banner would not disappear simply if she closed her eyes to his presence. So then. She would risk the common area like a Sunborn and a Blood Knight, and not cower or flee from those who might still watch her mistrustfully. Head up, shoulders squared, Annat stepped through the door.

Space was at premium in Light's Hope; pallets lined the walls, weary soldiers flopped upon them packed thick as blades of grass, their armor either slept in or returned to the armory where applicable. Where there were not sleeping agents of the Dawn, there were narrow tables set, their matching benches full even at this ridiculously early hour as the morning watch took their breakfast, only half-waking. Presiding over it all was the only table that never saw dissembly, as the meal tables did when they were not in use: seated at the high table that morn were Marjhan, Commander Dawnbringer, Father Montoy and Archmage Dosantos, the latter three all of the Brotherhood of the Light and considerably more level-headed, in Annat's opinion, than the Scarlet Commander. Father Montoy was, as ever, the impassive arbiter and observer of the shouting matches that had developed of late between Marjhan and the Commander, aged, grey-haired, dark-complected. Annat could not read the priest no matter how she struggled to divine his intent. Archmage Dosantos, on the other hand, was by comparison an open book, the slender blonde mage slumped resignedly in her high-backed chair, one long-fingered hand covering her eyes.

Marjhan and Dawnbringer were held back from rising to an on-their-feet verbal war only by the stern eye and will of Jessica Chambers, who maintained the cleanliness and workability of this tiny bastion of safety in the empirically unsafe Plaguelands. The food the commanders ate was prepared by her skill, served at her behest; even Marjhan, zealot that she was, did not have the gall to disrespect her skilled hostess in so blatantly rude a fashion. She and Dawnbringer were of an age, the leader of the Brotherhood more fair of colour than dark-haired Marjhan, but they both had righteous fire and stubbornness aplenty. Ms. Chambers had dishes in hand and was scowling at the pair when Annat strode past, and the blood elf's presence had an unexpected effect on the burgeoning conflict; thought Annat kept her eyes on the door and strode purposefully forward, the volume of the chatter in the nave dropped perceptively, and both Dawnbringer and Marjhan took pause in their oral duel to watch her walk by.

Rohan the Assassin, one of Marjhan's retinue of Crusaders, looked up from his breakfast and waved, flashing her a smile that was actually rather jovial and friendly. He was the only one, and in any case Rohan was considered a bit of an odd duck - any man who willingly, nay, _proudly_ wore a purple jumpsuit to combat the depredations of the Scourge's monsters accrued more strange looks than even Annat on her worst day. Annat spared the watery ghost of a smile for him, unable to summon an expression more substantial in her current mood.

She could feel the gazes of Dawnbringer and Marjhan on her back all the way to the door, and fancied she could even divine precisely the point where the Scarlet Commander's eye-daggers would have penetrated, had the woman dared act upon her distaste.

Outside the ruddy dawn greeted her; it had been several years since she had seen anything other than a bloody red sunrise, long enough that she had half-forgotten what colour it _should_ have been, untinted by the blight of the land. The Plaguelands stretched as far as her eye could see, the very earth of the place tainted, the grass and trees that still clung stubbornly to life mired in a sickness so thick that even the most skilled druids and healers of the Cenarion Circle oft despaired that naught could be done to ever restore the greenery. It was a landscape drawn in oily charcoal and coloured with dust and old blood, and in four years' time here, it seemed to her eye that the front line of the war against the Scourge had hardly taken or lost an inch of ground.

Morning preparations, here too, were carried out; Carlin Redpath and the Quartermaster bent their heads together with the Dispatch Commander, working through the details of the day's assails into blighted territory. Lord Tyrosus, field commander of the Argent Dawn, was walking among the camp, critically judging all by the light of the newborn dawn, and he was one of the few who looked upon the Blood Knight and did not bear contempt in his one-eyed gaze, beyond the normal amount of such that a general might bear for troops in need of stern discipline. Tyrosus paused briefly in his rounds of Light's Hope, nodded his chin for her benefit towards the rear of the chapel, and then continued his soldierly stroll as though the moment had not occurred. Ah. So Tyrosus was as eager as Dawnbringer to see the messenger banished from Light's Hope. This was, to Annat, unsurprising, yet still ominous enough that she hastened her step.

In the shadow of the rear of the chapel lay two kinds of shelter - the tiny stables, a haven for the horses, and the less small graveyard for the fallen of the Argent Dawn, a haven for the souls of men. Lurking beneath the eaves of the stables were Bettina and the Duke, with Korfax her dearest friends in Light's Hope, and a more mismatched pair one could not have found in all of Azeroth. Duke Zverenhoff was a human soldier older than many of the commanders inside combined, a steady, patient presence with a wealth of wisdom to impart, if one had the fortitude to learn from his gruff ways. Bettina Bigglezink, on the other hand, was a gnome and allegedly a scientist-scholar; her academic background didn't stop her from maintaining a certain bent towards chopping off enemies' legs at the knees, her axe oft in a two-handed grip with a grim set to her mouth. They tarried under the stable roof much as Annat had dallied at the door, watching with suspicious eyes and tension set in their muscles their unwarned, unwanted visitor. Obsidian, Annat's own Thalassian charger, snorted and flared his ember-red eyes in the dark of his stall, tossing his mane uneasily as though he yearned to be free of his confines. He could smell Elise - Annat was certain of it.

Mehlar Dawnblade sat cross-legged on a pile of crates that had been unloaded between the stables and the graveyard, pennant in hand, the banner of Silvermoon twitching in the slight morning breeze. A white scrap of linen had indeed been tied to it, lolling down now about Mehlar's white-knuckled hand, and the presence of it as well as the courier's armband, with matching pouch slung across the chest, were the few things about him that differed from Annat's memory. Tall; all of the sons of House Dawnblade were tall, her father included, lithe and broad of shoulder, blonde as the sun itself. Mehlar wore his mane long and uncut, a style that had no strictly feminine connotation or tradition among the Sindorei, though Annat knew it to be a strange thing amongst other peoples, and it was tangled and frizzed from what must have been a wild midnight ride through the Plaguelands. He had years ago eschewed the armor of his days as a Knight of the Silver Hand, when he and his brother had gladly served the Lightbringer. Now he wore black and red, colours of the Blood Knights, and in bitterest irony, it was his neice who now wore white, she who had never known the Light the way that Mehlar and Alaric Dawnblade had. Mehlar's great sword he had, she supposed, left at his post at the Bulwark in Tirisfal - his charger Elise, however, he had not, and the white mare greeted her as fondly as she had when Annat had been nine years old and first set in the saddle of a horse. Elise had been a gift from the Lightbringer himself, one of a matched pair of sisters bestowed to the Dawnblade brothers. The other pale mare had died with Annat's father, what bones of hers that had been recovered given their own shrine next to Alaric's grave-marker. She supposed that even Mehlar, who hated the Lightbringer now for mishandling the training of the future Lich King, could not bear to dispose of Elise in the way he had rid himself of all other trappings of his life as a paladin of the Light.

Mehlar fair leapt to his feet when Annat hove into his sight, a sudden movement that startled Bettina to draw and made the Duke narrow his eyes and drop a palm to the haft of his mace; Annat lifted a hand to stay their charge, ignoring her uncle for the moment, instead sparing precious seconds to pace over and greet whickering Elise with affectionate pats to her neck and mane. Mehlar had always been impatient. Annat intended to make him wait for as long as she thought he could stand.

"You keep her well," she said at last, in the Common tongue, that Bettina and the Duke would know she meant them to hear what was spoken. Another pat was bestowed the white mare, her coat showing threads of shining silver at her withers, badges of venerable age that Annat did not remember. Gentle admonishment: "You should have left her at the Bulwark, uncle. Elise is getting far too old for such haring off into the wild unknown, especially in the black of night."

"There's some years of service left in her yet," answered Mehlar in clipped Common, angry, stubborn, itching beneath the yoke imposed upon him by the presence of the Duke and Bettina. His eyes kept travelling from Annat to the pair posed entirely too benignly under the stable eaves, the banner of Quel'thalas fluttering a touch, much like his nerves. "I come on official business, bearing a missive from Silvermoon. It is no matter of the Argent Dawn."

"I have worked and served among them in my father's stead for years now," said Annat, her tone deceptively mild. She did not look toward her uncle, eyes only for Elise and showering the aged mare with affection. "I am as much a member of the Argent Dawn as I am a member of the Blood Knights, and in far greater standing."

Mehlar snorted. So did Bettina. Annat hid her slight smile behind a pressing of fingertips to her mouth, while the gnome, at least, had the grace to look shamefaced before resuming her resolute study of the underside of the stable roof, axe still in hand.

"You cannot honestly believe such tripe, niece." Mehlar's gaze was level and contained a more than healthy dose of cynicism. "You are Alaric's daughter, through and through. Knighthood is as much a part of you as breathing -"

"And what would you know of it, uncle?" She kept her tone cool, but anger roiled beneath the surface, a righteous fury long held in check that threatened make a bid for freedom once confronted with its object. "Of how like Father I am, or even my knighthood itself? You've not seen me since I was scarce old enough to hold Elise and Auri's saddlehorns."

"You remain here three years after all obligation that would hold you ended," he returned, quietly. If he sensed her hidden temper, he gave no sign of it, instead casting his eyes aside to study the Duke. Zverenhoff had a keenly interested eye for the Sindorei courier now, and they sized each other from across the makeshift stableyard. "So very like Alaric, Annat. You are loath to leave a task unfinished."

"I beg to differ - my task is long since done. I stay because my sword is far more welcome, and far more needed, here than in fair Silvermoon." She glanced away from him, stroked pale Elise's neck, then stepped from the horse at last to sketch the mockery of a paladin's courtly bow for Mehlar. Her voice took on the glacial qualities intrinsic of Naxxramas itself. "I receive you, dearest Uncle, in such state as I possess here at Light's Hope. I pray it is not mere filial banter that brings you so distant of your post at Tirisfal."

Mehlar flashed her a tight, decidedly grim smile, and the premonition sent a chill skating up her spine. "You would pray so, wouldn't you?"

"You speak in riddles, Uncle."

"Would there were no need," he murmured, and then abruptly switched from the sharp, almost invective tones of the Common tongue to the musical language of their birth. Thalassian was a tongue so long unheard by Annat's ears that it took a breath to recognize it, engaging mental processes long since left to rust, in the years she had remained alone of her kind at Light's Hope. ":Silvermoon has sent quite the pamphlet:" Mehlar said as he reached into his courier's pouch, producing a thick sheaf of papers bound by black ribbon. ":It is written entirely in the politician's tongue, and if you are as much like my brother as I wish to believe, you haven't the patience to read through the packet entire. To that end, I was briefed upon its contents.:"

Annat's breath caught in her throat. Black ribbon. The seal of the Regent himself, Lor'themar Theron, was impressed in wax at the centerpoint. There must have been a noble death in Silvermoon, there was no other explanation for the combination of seal and ribbon that explained Mehlar's presence. Annat's heart thudded in her throat as her mind went to her brothers, her mother. She contained the sudden stab of fear as she saw the soldiers of the Dawn narrowing their gazes in suspicion, rightly so over the sudden change of speech, and forced her voice to remain level. "Bettina and Duke Zverenhoff are fit to hear such news."

"This is no business of the Argent Dawn," said Mehlar, stubbornly, reverting to Common. He still held the packet in one hand, the pennant in the other. After a breath he rose, locked his felfire-green eyes on her paler ones, and struck the banner into the packed earth, where it stayed and shivered from the force. "You may tell them later if you wish to do so, but they will _not_ hear of it from my lips."

He strode once, closed the distance between them, and took her unresisting hand in his own. Into her palm he placed the packet, closed her fingers over it, his official duty as Silvermoon's courier completed by that traditional gesture. Annat broke the gaze first, staring mutely down at the black ribbon of the missive in hand. Briefly she considered flinging this dire gift back upon him, or calling down the wrath of Bettina and the Duke on her uncle. But Mehlar had done naught to deserve such punishment, and the style of shooting the messenger had gone out with such villains as the Lord of Blackrock Mountain.

Nothing for it, then. She sighed. Her fingers made small divots in the paper, and she gestured vaguely to her Argent allies in soothement. ":The translation, Uncle? You're absolutely right. I've little patience for letters with more frill than substance.:"

":The, ah, abridged version?:" Mehlar released her hand and stepped back, stonefaced now, but increasingly uncomfortable, as if he expected the contents of the packet to explode now that they had been delivered - or perhaps, Annat thought later, he expected _her_ to do so. ":The Regency of the High Court of Silvermoon, and here I am heavily paraphrasing, summons to court the Lady-Knight Annat Sunborn, the Scion of House Sunborn, to perform her Sacred Duty as the Scion of the Noble House -:"

"Wait, _what??_" Annat stared at him in white shock, the rusted gears of a Thalassian mindset slipping severely enough as she blanched that she lapsed briefly back into Common. Mehlar plunged on as though she hadn't spoken, as though if he got the words out quickly enough he might avoid their backlash.

":- in the rectification of her Lady Mother Gwynn Sunborn, who unfortunately has transformed irreparably into one of the Wretched, and must be dealt with in a manner befitting her Noble station:" he finished, to Annat's utter astonishment. From the expression Mehlar wore, he would have happily been away from that place as soon as possible, but his niece was hardly one to let it stand at that.

The Duke would be heard to remark, later, after the ruckus had died, that men that morning yet abed were given a most rude awakening, courtesy Sindorei temper.

_":What in the __**nine hells**__ do you mean, __**the Scion of House Sunborn?!**__:"_

Mehlar winced. ":Niece, heed your voice.:"

":None here can speak a _word_ of Thalassian, and I think I've a _right_ to shout!:" bellowed Annat, startling placid Elise and her face flushing scarlet now that the shock had passed. All round came a sudden flood of the music of metal, those of the Argent Dawn already afoot rushing to the scene of the filial reunion, a score of knights and magic-users scrambling to sortie and like expecting entire battalions of Scourge attacking stableward. Instead, they were somewhat perturbed to find a blood elf yelling at her own uncle, gesticulating wildly in her anger, while Bettina and Duke Zverenhoff hovered at the edge of the confronation, begging for an excuse to separate Annat from Mehlar and Mehlar's head from his shoulders. Annat paid them little heed, her attentions and righteous fury solely for Mehlar. ":Explain yourself, uncle! You know _very_ well that _Val_ is the heir to the scionship, and last I'd heard my brother had _hardly_ been disowned! A Farstrider gallivanting off and living up to his title is _no_ reason to tap the wrong Sunborn child for bloody court functions!:"

He blinked at her, then narrowed his gaze, seizing the possibility of a verbal high ground as soon as he glimpsed it. ":You hadn't been informed?:" That took a breath of the wind from her sails, though her tone was still angry on sheer momentum alone.

":Informed of _what?_:"

":Val's been missing for quite some time. Your mother officially pronounced him dead this past winter.:" His gimlet stare was all that held her to her feet, Mehlar snatching the chance at advantage over his furious niece. ":Missives were sent, recalling you to Silvermoon, never answered, of course. I knew no ordinary courier could be trusted to reach Light's Hope.:"

The news was almost as a physical blow. Val was gone. Her laughing brother, too naive for the court of Silvermoon but noble heir nonetheless, patient, friendly Val who hadn't a single thought in his head yet whom everyone utterly adored - Vital, dynamic Val Sunborn, _dead?_ It was unthinkable. Impossible. The black-ribboned packet in her palm was deceptively light for the inescapable burden it represented.

Her knees threatened to turn to water beneath her, and she felt the colour drain once more from her face. She stared down at the missive in her hand, crushed it under her fingers to disguise how her hand trembled, spoke without looking up. ":How long gone?:"

":Two years. He simply vanished one day. The Farstriders are as clueless as anyone.:" Mehlar dropped his gaze from her face as he said it, perhaps realizing the impact of what news he had delivered along with his dire message from Silvermoon. She senses more than saw him frown at the ground, at the surrounding ring of puzzled, irritated Argent Dawn members, anywhere but his niece's eyes.

Val, gone. Just like that. And he had _been_ gone for two years, and she hadn't known. None in Silvermoon had bothered carry the news with their own lips, instead trusting to the courage of horses and the fortitude of couriers, clearly of which neither had been exceptional enough to complete the journey from the north. Annat did wonder, darkly in the shadow of herself, if this had not been precisely what some of the court would have wished. Val gone, vanished. Annat indisposed, perhaps dead herself in the Plaguelands, out of communication with the city at any rate. And it would have been only a matter of time before something happened to the last bulwark that stood between Sindorei court intrigues and the youngest children of House Sunborn, two boys aged twelve and nine, hardly fit for Scionship of a Noble House of Silvermoon...

And into this loaded circumstance, there came the letter with its raven ribbon and wax seal. Lady Gwynn her mother, fallen to the addiction that plagued the Sindorei, utterly irretrievable. The inevitable had come to pass, and now her brothers were endangered by the lack of her presence.

They must have thought her dead with Alaric. They must have sent Mehlar expecting to find the wreck of a grave, not a paladin baptized in fire and blood. Assuming they expected Mehlar to reach Light's Hope at all, for he had his own share of enemies at court.

She wished very much to flee keening to her broom-closet, lock herself in its confines, and cry until she hadn't the strength to weep another tear. Val, dead. Mother, Wretched. And Father was long since dead as well, the Fates of Azeroth slowly isolating her, picking off her dearest allies one by one. That she hadn't slain Korfax or Bettina or Duke Zverenhoff with her mere presence was, to her grieving mind, no small miracle in and of itself.

In the end, however, Mehlar was the rightest of all. Annat was indeed her father's daughter. With an effort of will she divorced herself from her grief, packed it away in a little box locked in a dusty corner of her heart, swallowing her tears, covering over her pain so that not even the sun's swords of light could reveal it. She would live, and have the luxury of weeping later. There were things that needed seeing to. Preparations to be made, duties to attend -

Ah. Duties.

"The Scion's sacred duty," she murmured dully, lapsing once more into Common. It seemed to break at last the spell of utter bestillment that had fallen over the tiny stableyard.

"Sunborn!"

Annat turned, too grim to be surprised when she saw that at her back had crept forth a solid wall of soldiers of the Argent Dawn, once that extended in a wide circle all the way to where Bettina and the Duke stood watch, around behind the little stable, and met again at the far wall behind Mehlar, a row of paladins holding a line that bisected the graveyard. Weapons were drawn, shields held tight to forearms. At least two spellcasters had their hands half-twisted in preparation of scorching arcane sigils into the air, and even steady Korfax had his battleaxe in hand, hefting the weapon as if it weighed no more than a feather - a very large, sharp, metallic feather, but a feather nonetheless. Even Marjhan was among those who had rushed to the scene, a dire mace in hand, hanging by a breath or ill glance given to leap upon one or both of the arguing blood elves. In all true honesty, Annat admitted to herself, she and Mehlar were exceptionally lucky that they hadn't been flattened by a score of nervy Dawn.

Lord Tyrosus stood at their head, his weapon sheathed, hands at his sides, his sole blue eye a fleck of adamantite in his craggy face. He pinned them both in that one-eyed gaze, like blades through the heart, and his voice was deceptively quiet. "I take it his news was not something you wished to hear, soldier?"

Tyrosus was a fair commander - stern, and swift to discipline when his troops failed to toe his line, but fair. She would get but one chance to explain herself to his satisfaction, and as it was his will and his alone that kept the Argent Dawn from swarming over them like ants, she needs must make it a good one.

"Family business, in Quel'thalas, my Lord." She consciously bowed her head, strove to be at once terse, respectful and penitent. It seemed much of the regiment at Light's Hope was present in this moment, watching critically her every move, but it was Tyrosus who held her attention now. Her fingers tightened, knuckles white over the ribboned missive. "I beg permission for leave. I must away as soon as possible."

He paused. "Your alleged uncle?" Always his first thoughts were to the safety of the chapel.

"He leaves as well," and here she rose her head enough to slide her jadefire gaze to Mehlar, "though not to the same destination."

"You are dismissed, courier," said Tyrosus, and his azure eye made the rounds of the bladed ring that circumscribed the stableyard. "And you lot also. Return to your posts, all of you."

Mehlar opened his mouth as if he made protest or make comment; seeing the looks on the faces of the assembled Dawn, however, he seemed think better of such brazen recklessness. Wise decision, as Annat could see on the faces of several (Marjhan included) a kind of speculative, hungry look, not quite aggressive, but far from friendly. She had seen the expression on many a courtier in her youth. Its impact was not lessended by its presence on the visages of those who bore well-used arms.

The Argent Dawn, splinter organizations included, filed back to their interrupted acitivites, though Bettina, the Duke and Korfax lagged nearby, at the very edge of earshot. Tyrosus sent them a look that would have sent lesser creatures scattering as leaves before the gale, but bravely, they weathered Tyrosus's anger; Korfax, Champion that he was, returned the look with a level, fierce one of his own, and the Lord Commander shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirking. That those three would risk his ill temper for her sake was evidence enough of their belief.

Mehlar, his lips pressed into a grim white line, plucked the pennant from where it had stuck shivering in the earth, then paced to collect Elise. The veteran mare had seemed unmoved by the threat of the Dawn, but was not so much fool as to attempt to nibble at the blighted weeds that sat at the base of the chapel's outer wall. Mehlar had only to touch her bridle before she made aware it was time to leave; away she stepped from the wall and her master put a booted foot into the stirrup, legged over gracefully into the saddle. The tip of the pennant he wedged at one instep, rather makeshift for a standard-bearer, but until he reached Tirisfal, such would have to do.

":Farewell, niece.:" His voice was even, cool.

"Al diel shala, uncle," she answered almost absently. Tyrosus's presence demanded her attention, and as Mehlar put the spurs to Elise's ribs and found the fallow highroad, she sent no more thoughts chasing after him in the dust. His duty was complete. The packet was in her hands now, and the knowledge of what it contained. Her apostate uncle stood to gain little from his niece by remaining, and she from him even less.

Tyrosus waited until the echoes of Elise's hoofbeats had faded away, played out across the vastness of former Lordaeron, and the last stragglers of the Dawn had paced to their rightful places in the chapel's defenses. "How dire this family business of yours?" said he at last, his eyebrows raised, startling Annat with his openness. Anger she had expected, displeasure at the least. Not this frankness.

"Very," spoke she. Tyrosus's honesty commanded her own in turn, and she gave it, even conscious of her eavesdroppers nearby. "My eldest brother is dead and my mother, mad. Leadership of the House falls to me." A pause. "I may be unable to return, sir." Despite her isolation amongst the Dawn, that thought send a twang of pain that tightened her chest, a retightening of her heartstrings. Father was buried here, what was left of him. And though she was loath to admit it to herself, she would miss dearly what few friends she had. Korfax, Bettina and the Duke had been kind to her. She hated to repay that kindness with abandonment.

He nodded once, a precise motion, and Annat could almost see the gears turning in his exquisite commander's mind, a fine construct of a thing that no engineer could ever hope to replicate. After a breath he set a hand upon her shoulder, the gesture of a man among peers, not a lord and his troops. She met his adamant eye, confused, but he spoke before she could question him. "In truth, Sunborn," said he, "I never had the authority to decree whether you would leave or stay. You were Alaric's soldier, and Alaric's you have remained, though he is dead with the rest of your squadron. But," he said, lifting a finger before she could interrupt, "you have served bravely in his stead with the Argent Dawn. I judge his pledge to our aid fulfilled, and release you from your duties here. Return to Silvermoon, Annat. You're a free woman now."

He clapped her shoulder once, turned and strode beyond her, sending Korfax and the others truly scattering this time, parting like the seas to admit the commander beyond them. He paused at their threshold, however, glanced back over his shoulder at the flabbergasted paladin gaping in his wake. "I never had the chance to serve with your father before the Scourge came," he noted, his seamed features as unreadable as the very stones of the earth. "But some days, I wish I had. He was a good man. One of the best. You do well by his memory." He lifted his hand again, a gesture of farwell this time. "Light be with you."

She stared at his back, her mental defenses swept out from under her, world set on its ear. Tyrosus strode from them, and his forbiddin presence removed, Bettina ran to her and clung about her knees, like a small child seeking comfort. Korfax and Zverenhoff were somewhat more dignified in their rush to Annat's side, but a rush it was, unwilling it seemed to send her on her way with words left unspoken.

Bettina released her somewhat after a moment, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of one forearm, and Annat knelt in the opening given her, so that she and the gnome might be on similiar ground. "So you're leaving then?" She gave Annat a heart-piercing look, and Annat wished for all the world that she need not do this terrible thing.

But nevertheless, she nodded, sadly. "I have to go. I don't want to. I'd stay if I had the choice -"

"But it's noble succession you're dealing with," cut in the Duke, gruff, almost comfortingly so. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned his moustache down at her. "And you've told us about the little 'uns, Hillex and Matthaias. If it's anything like Stormwind court up there in Silvermoon, they'll get eaten alive."

"Where noble titles are concerned," noted Korfax quietly, "men lose all thought of right and wrong beneath the bloody tide of ambition. Light safeguard your brothers, Lady Sunborn."

"We'll watch over your father for you," offered Bettina, and the kindness of the gesture cut deeper than any blade. Pain pricked Annat's eyes, and the paladin gladly enfolded Bettina in her arms, burying her face and her tears in the gnome's unresisting shoulder. She tarried there a span of heartbeats more, only so long allowing her grief to threaten to overwhelm, before she croke the embrace and rose to her full height. The Duke she blessed with a kiss to the cheek; Korfax received the same, knowing the men would find it uncomfortable to be hugged by a Sindorei she-paladin, and substituting instead a socially acceptable replacement.

"It has been a privilege and an honor," she said, her voice of a sudden hoarse, her throat tight though she clamped down the tears. "To have known you, to have had your friendship, to have fought at your sides. You have my most humble and sincere gratitude."

"We will meet again," said Korfax solemnly, thumping his fist to his heart, the salute of a brother, not a soldier. "In Azeroth, or in the Light's embrace. We will meet again."

Bettina and Zverenhoff echoed the gesture and the words, and the tears welled up once more in her eyes, but she wiped them with the back of a hand, forced a pained-sounding laugh. "Come now, you three, you'll reduce me to blithering uselessness! There's yet work to be done, preparations to be made. I shan't ride off into the wilderness with naught but a sword on my back and the captain's good word."

"If you have to go, Annie," Bettina swore, setting her jaw, "you won't go without supplies! Enough to make even Obsidian stagger!" She pumped her fists, getting into the spirit of it. "I'll weigh that charger down so much he won't know his nose from his arse!"

"We'll make ready for you, Ann." The Duke gave her a sad, but grandfatherly smile. "Go say your other goodbyes. We'll handle procurement and the like, and if the quartermaster gives us hell for it, by the Light, she'll have me _and_ Korfax to deal with!"

"Thank you," said Annat again, quieter, simpler, but still as truly felt. "Thank you."

The Duke made a 'shoo, shoo' gesture, and Annat, smiling through a veil of tears, sketched her Blood Knight bow and turned. At her back Zverenhoff herded Korfax and Bettina off to do as promised; she, having been so gently dismissed, paced past the tiny stable - Obsidian whinnied at her and paced in his stall, the stallion thwarted, and she for the moment paid him no heed - to pass among the headstones and tiny shrines that dotted the graveyard behind the chapel.

She needn't look for landmarks among the stones to know where her father's lie. Her feet found it unerringly, and she went to her knees before it, bowing her head before the inscribed stone marker. Auri, Elise's sister, had her own tiny shrine huddled next to the marker; it bore simply the carven image of a white horse and her name, while Alaric's had somewhat more information.

Sir Alaric Dawnblade, it said silently for any who would read, Paladin of the Light. Husband, Father and Beloved Commander. He Died Bravely.

That last had been Annat's own request, and seeing it again summoned once more the thrice-bedamned tears that she hated to shed. It seemed unequivocably silly, but a piece of her thought, Father should never have to see his daughter cry. She dried her eyes and lifted her head, thinking on the rope of scarlet hair she had buried with his bones, the pulsing Shard of his broken sword that had saved her life. As her thoughts lit upon it, the Light omnipresent in the back of her mind pulsed as well, in time once more with her heartbeat; she locked that down and ignored it, unable and unwilling to deal with what it meant at precisely that moment in time.

"I leave for home, Father." Her voice sounded even to her own ears like that of a little girl. "Val is gone, and Mother... well. You've likely guessed." She swallowed past the lump in her throat. "I'll take care of them, so be restful here. Watch over Light's Hope for me. If anyone can hold this line for the Dawn on sheer will, it's you."

She reached out then and pressed the tips of her fingers to Alaric's name. The stone was cool and smooth between her fingers, and did nothing to suppress the image of him in life. Temperate, patient, kind, a man of morals, magnetic and brilliant. An anomaly among the Quel'dorei before the Sunwell had fallen, and an anomaly among the Sindorei afterward. She fervently wished that Tyrosus was right when he said she had done right by him, for she could not bear the thought of having failed Alaric Dawnblade.

":I love you, Father:" said she in whispers, Thalassian words meant for no one but Alaric. ":Goodbye.:"

She rose to her feet then, and turned to face the ruddy dawn.


	3. The High Road

_"You might think it's frivolous of me, dear sister, but I tell you only what I feel: you cannot know the true beauty of a land until you've walked its length and breadth, slept under its stars, foraged from its plains. Quel'thalas is a princess among beauties, cool and clever, but familiar to me. Lordaeron is so very different, vast and green, a warmer land than the north - she is the laughing lady that dances under the sunlight. I quite like it here, and think you would as well. Wouldn't you love to gallop Auri or Elise across the hills, no cares in the world? That's what freedom is, the ability to go where you wish, in whatever manner and timeliness you desire. You might not understand what it is to feel wanderlust, Annie, but perhaps that's why I'm the Farstrider of the family. Lordaeron yet holds more secrets for me to unveil, but I swear that soon I'll tear myself away from them long enough to come home and visit. Lorcan mislikes this Darrowshire place anyway."_

- Val Sunborn, in a letter to his sister, Annat Sunborn, written a month before the Blight came to Lordaeron. Excerpted from _The Sunborn Correspondences_.

* * *

While Bettina's enthusiasm was well-meant, her oath to load Annat's horse down with slightly more supplies than the charger could carry was mediated by Duke Zverenhoff's better judgement; Light's Hope and the Argent Dawn hadn't the supplies to spare to pack Obsidian's saddlebags to bursting, but in the end, a happy medium was reached that satisfied both Bettina and the Duke as well as the Quartermaster. Though no bird nor bat would dare fly across the mountains to Quel'thalas (they balked at the border, the Flightmasters of both factions claimed, though could perhaps be trained to overcome their fear in due time) the journey would not have been excessively longer afoot, given the speed with which a Thalassian charger could travel.

The rations of the Argent Dawn, primarily manna biscuits and sunfruit, were normally made short shrift, but Bettina saw to it that the measures were made as much as possible without threatening the Quartermaster with apoplexy, and tucked in gifts besides. Bandages aplenty. Healing salves in sealed earthen jars. Two precious green apples wrapped in linen, for Obsidian, who could be persuaded to truly heroic acts for the bribe of one. A sweet-smelling concoction in a stoppered glass phial was included, Bettina's alchemical contribution to stemming the tide of disease, carefully packed against breakage. The contents of Annat's saddlebags were made one massive Argent Dawn care packet, and if Obsidian whinnied and threw his head and mane about as he was saddled and laden down, the Duke and Korfax, if no others, were brave enough to risk his teeth and arcanite hooves.

There was precious little to-do and almost no ceremony about the event when she, at last, had gathered her things (what few worldly possessions she had, anyway), swept out her closet, and swung into the saddle. Obsidian was in rare form, his black coat gleaming from a thorough currying, his eyes like demon-lit rubies beneath the shag of coal mane. Though some of the Blood Knights' mounts were indeed born of mortal mares, Obsidian was not counted among them - the truest-blooded of the Thalassian chargers were, rumour held, summoned directly from the dimension where demons resided, stallions all and housed in the stable of Hell itself. He was tall for a horse, with hooves like serving platters, if plates could shear heads from shoulders, black from nose to tail excepting the uncannily intelligent, of times malicious scarlet eyes, and had always the taste of copper and brimstone in the air about him. His feet had copious soft charcoal feathering at the fetlocks, though it was often bound beneath the metal that ringed his hooves; on festival days or when Annat felt in need of her mount being especially showy, he had full caparison that draped over him like war-banners, but for a ride through the Plaguelands, piecemeal of his blood-copper barding would do. Even without the spikes on, he looked quite menacing.

Many of the Argent Dawn refused to lag near him, not merely because he ill-wished to be handled by any but his mistress, and oft expressed his displeasure in the form of nips and bone-shattering kicks. Those who misliked Annat most swore he was demonspawn, and that she was consorting with forces equal in darkness to the very Scourge they fought. They said such things quietly, however; the warlock Mataus the Wrathcaster was, like Rohan, one of Marjhan's retinue, but possessed of an arrogant and violent temper, and he of all beings would not appreciate his methods being impugned upon by simple soldiers of the Argent Dawn.

Truthfully, if they had ever simply asked, Annat might have told them what they wished to hear - that the stallion had simply appeared one day in Silvermoon among the stabled horses, shortly after her investiture as a Blood Knight apprentice, and he would have nothing of anyone except a skinny Sindorei girl of not quite fifteen. He had been a loyal if eerily keen companion, and since he himself would let no other Knight claim him, Bloody _or_ Silver-handed, there had been nothing for it but to let him remain her own.

Four years had not mellowed him, but he seemed to take little issue with Zverenhoff and Korfax; perhaps that was because, after their tours in the Plaguelands, they had little fear of fleshly horses, and less tolerance than even that for his tomfoolery. Even a demon incarnate must feel some amount of sheepishness when smacked sharply on the nose for his misbehaviour.

He pranced beneath her, eager to be off, to stretch his long legs and run high along the worn track of the Road, but she kept him under rein. In a fit of defiance, he high-stepped forward as prettily as could be asked, showy, imposing, and snorted and tossed his mane as though he were greatly put-upon to pick up his own feet. She coaxed him gently away from Light's Hope, riding tall in the saddle, and refused to be tempted to look back.

She did, however, glance to her left when hoofbeats that were not Obsidian's rang out behind her. Even unwilling to be seen regretful, she was not stupid.

"Will you not anger your Lord Commander yet further?" she said, when Korfax and his massive grey mount had fallen into step with hers. The Champion could not have been borne by any normal horse, but his Tavris could have been a paler, Lordaeran brother to her Thalassian stallion. The pair of them together seemed so collossal that they could have borne the world upon their backs in previous lives.

Korfax did not so much as flick his eyes towards her, his gaze upon the horizon, squinting in the rising light. Tavris paced serenely in time with Obsidian, ignoring the darker stallion's speculative glances. "In this, I will not be dissuaded by my lord's temper. I would see you escorted as far as I dare ride from Light's Hope."

That provoked from her a smile. Who, in all honesty, would have dared gainsay the Champion of the Brotherhood of the Light? Could even Commander Dawnbringer aspire to such courage? But she made no more comment, and she and Korfax rode together in companionable silence, with little trouble aside from the occasional touch of the reins to remind Obsidian of his place. North went they along the fallow road, past the ruins of settlements that had once peppered the land as thick as trees in a forest; past the remnant of the Eastwall Tower, in a state of perpetual disrepair and staffed only by the dutiful, restless spectres of the men (and griffons!) that had served the place in life. The both of them nudged their mounts aside to give that haunted place wide berth.

When Light's Hope was but a speck upon the horizon, Korfax at last reluctantly rounded Tavris. With a touch of her knee Annat halted Obsidian, and silence ruled between them for long heartbeats.

"Al'di-ell shalah," said he, clumsily mimicking her Thalassian, and Annat was startled to laughter upon the hearing of it. He frowned uncomfortably at her from Tavris's back, the gesture having been well-meant. "That - that is the word, is it not?"

"Yes, yes," she soothed, still smiling, "such is what one says to a traveller departing, you merely caught me unaware. And -"

"Yes?"

Your accent is quite strange, she thought at him teasingly, but did not speak it, for unlike Bettina and the Duke, Korfax had never made light of her at times ungainly forays into his mother tongue. These were simple gestures offered, but heartfelt ones, and it would be cruel to discipline them as she did her fractious horse. "Shorel'aran is a less difficult farewell," said she instead, her spirits lifted despite the nature of her journey north.

"Shor-el arran, then," grumped Korfax, and kneed Tavris forth, that he might lean across the gap between their stallions and share with her a clasping of arms. It was a gesture that might have died with Lordaeron, if good men such as the Brotherhood's Champion did not keep it among the living. They held the clutch for several long heartbeats, Korfax reluctant to release his friend to the wilds, Annat reluctant to go.

"We will meet again," swore Annat, echoing Korfax's earlier sentiments. "In the Light or in Azeroth - we will meet again."

"It will be so," said Korfax with a grim smile, and then he broke the contact, wheeled Tavris to set him on the path to Light's hope, and set his heels to the stallion's sides. Tavris, perhaps sensing they returned home to safer if not greener pastures, ate up long tracts of ground with his stride, his tail flaring like a banner behind him.

Annat waited there, throat knotted, until Korfax was a streamer of scarlet dust on the horizon, and then at last turned Obsidian to pace northward along the dismal High Road. Obsidian's steps were a steady beat below her, the clop of his hooves ringing out across the plains. Head bent, her thoughts turned inward as she left the precise method of traveling ahorse to the horse, pausing only to correct Obsidian when he slyly attempted to step astray of the road.

It was truly done now. There was, as the saying went, no turning back - although in earnest, Annat had to admit to herself, the second Mehlar had arrived there had been only one course for her to take and yet remain true to who she was. And what her father had instilled in her. Oh, certainly, she could have shirked her noble duties yet longer if she had truly desired, and that she had thusfar managed, being not the eldest child. But with Val grounded, permanently as it were, and Mother allegedly a shadow of her former self, who then would have kept House Sunborn stable and prosperous? Hillex, who would this year turn thirteen, he who had less notion of how to run a Noble House of Silvermoon than he did how to boil a pot of water? Or perhaps Matthaias, aged nine as of a month prior, still ensconced within the fortress of the nursery, not yet old enough even for an assignment as servant-page among the Blood Knights he so adored?

Alaric had impressed upon his eldest children at young age the importance of choosing one's stewards carefully. Of those handpicked few whom he had allowed reign over House Sunborn's inner workings, almost all had died when Arthas had decimated their city and people. And those that Mother had appointed in their place, well after Father had died and Mother had gone a touch mad, Annat would not have trusted with the feeding of a hawkstrider - which was a notoriously _un_fussy breed of mount when it came to mealtimes.

In fact, of the household of Sunborn entire, only Lady Althiea Firedark had shown any true love of its children; a gifted warlock born of one of the many minor Houses that had not entirely survived the Lich King's rampage, she had leapt at the chance to tutor young Hillex when he began displaying talent in her field of expertise. Althiea, Annat trusted with the life and sanity of her brother - Althiea she could, Annat suspected, trust with her finances and the well-being of her household as well. The woman was shockingly even-keeled for a warlock. Good sense was something of a rarity among the Sindorei, much less among those who regularly consorted with demons in the course of their chosen specialty.

With Gwynn yet alive, however Wretched, and she possessing rank merely as a child's tutor, Althiea could do precious little to see Hillex and Matthaias through the turbulent days Silvermoon's ribboned missive promised. That would be remedied, Annat swore, once she saw Silvermoon again. There would be _safeguards_ set in place this time, should the unthinkable fall upon her as Scion, as it had fallen upon Val -

Val. Her throat closed, stabs of pain riveting her tongue to her spine. There would... there would have to be arrangements made. A funeral. In memoriam of her dearest, laughing brother, now gone forever, never again to tell her Farstrider stories or send her earnestly-written letters, chaining her sanity to the physical realm when it might have flown loose across the heavens and turned her into a Wretched being less steady and more bloodthirsty than poor mad Isirian had been -

A single shrieking sob of grief echoed over the empty Plaguelands before she could contain it, but blessedly, there was nothing more than blasted earth, the odd shambling zombie, and Obsidian to hear her weep. She indulged in it as much as she dared when surrounded on all sides by possibility of Scourge ambush. She could grieve for Val on the road to Silvermoon, and purge her heart of that sadness as much as she could; she would be quite preoccupied, at any rate, grieving for her mother once she arrived.

The Duty of the Scion loomed overhead and threw its shadow across her consciousness, but Annat refused to acknowledge its presence beyond a cursory nod that such existed at all. There was, after all, such a thing as too much.

Obsidian paced down that long, lonely road with surprisingly little mischief, setting himself the loping, ground-eating canter that he could have kept up for days if necessary; perhaps the uncannily intelligent stallion could sense that his mistress needed this catharsis, and gave her little grief of his own. In any case, without her instruction he continued on the fallow highway north, shading to the east a touch as they moved beyond Northpass Tower, another guardpost staffed by revenants of the blight's victims, and a place that even the demon-charger was unwilling to test, nor tempt.

Not far beyond its landmark was the Thalassian border, and Annat had dried her tears and rubbed the red from her eyes well before the pass hove into view. Entry into Quel'thalas meant only one thing for the Scion of a noble House: preservation of the carefully maintained appearances orchestrated by the high court. Nobles do not weep. Emotions are for the proletariat. Or so the upper echelons might have claimed - Gwynn Sunborn had been rather relaxed in that regard, and Alaric himself mortifyingly shameless, although Father had never, even prior the coming of the king of Lordaeron, been fond of politic appearances. It was just as well, since Annat was certain that the elder members of the court would have had apoplexies over House Dawnblade and its... _quirky_ ways.

Her newfound resolve to be as unmoved and cold as the statuary, however, was left briefly by the wayside when her gaze landed upon a solitary figure crouched in the shadow of the mountain pass, as lonesome as the half-dead lands surrounding him: a single knight set upon the longest watch of all, guardianship of the edge of the kingdom, with no hope of company and little of relief. What Adon had done to deserve this post at the southernmost extremity of Quel'thalas, Annat did not know and had never dared to ask. It was generally understood in Silvermoon, however, that whatever act he had committed had been A Very Bad Thing, and that a proper lady or lord was not to associate with him, living in exile all but in name, alone at the place where the Ghostlands and the Plaguelands met.

Annat, taking after her father, had never been very much for being a proper lady.

"Adon!" He glanced up at her call and rose gracefully to his feet, stretched the full length of his lean frame with helm tucked beneath an arm, ash-blonde hair listing in the faint breeze. She did not give him the opportunity to mistake her for anything other than an ally. ":How fare you, my friend?:"

Immediately his demeanour wholly changed from the brooding, dangerous sentinel to something quite a bit more befitting the prospect of company - Adon's smile could have lit the world. "Annat Sunborn?" Forward he rushed to meet her, verymuch like a lost puppy, eager to please and thirsty for the company of a _living_being. There were plenty of the dead, as his sword could have attested, that desired his eternal fellowship. As he approached Annat reined Obsidian in, reducing his canter to an easy walk; the horse protested, tossing his head and snorting a breath of poppy-red brimstone as if pouting, but was game enough to slow his pace for her nevertheless. ":My lady, well met!:" grinned Adon, genuine in his delight. ":You're a sight for sore eyes, and a voice for sore ears. I'd thought you'd long forgotten all about me.:"

":Never, Adon. I would weep if you were lost to us, except you're too tough a bastard to ever die:" she grinned back at him. It was not difficult to be infected by his pure, joyous good cheer, and it was good as well to drop, for a brief time, the stiff words and disciplined manner of the Sindorei for virtue of his presence. Tall, perpetually beanpole-skinny Adon was the most plain-spoken of their people Annat had ever met, perhaps vintage of his long post at the mountain pass - if Annat had been in his place, she too would have too much value for company and news beyond the world of the mountain pass to have much patience for dilly-dallying. ":What news have you from Silvermoon?:"

":Precious little, I'm afraid.:" Adon came alongside rider and horse then, and Annat tugged Obsidian's speed down further to a leisurely stroll. The knight himself turned neatly on a heel to match their pace and set a palm at Obsidian's withers, proceeding therein to walk the pair of them into the pass himself. Obsidian whuffed and made great fuss of tossing his head and whipping his mane about his powerful hindquarters, but did not turn to bite the offending hand as he might have if Annat had been more distracted. He got a pat to the neck in praise of his self-control. ":Several messengers headed south and west in the last months, dispatched from the city. Most of them didn't stay to chat with me, but at least one was destined for the Bulwark and your uncle - is that what brings you so far north of your own post?:"

":Sadly:" she nodded. ":Family business calls me. I've release of Light's Hope and the Argent Dawn, by order of Lord Tyrosus. Speaking of the Dawn, my friend -:" She turned in the saddle then and rummaged among the nearest saddlepack to come to hand; from its depths she drew a trio of blessed sunfruit, ripe and saffron-coloured, wrapped in clean white linen. These she offered to Adon with a smile. ":I'm aware you rare see fresh fruit often here at your post. I've plenty to share.:"

":My lady is _most_generous and kind!:" grinned Adon in faux-fawning, and though he was polite and careful about his snatching-up of them, once in his arms he plucked up one of the round fruit and unhesitatingly sank his teeth into its flesh. The expression of sheer ecstasy on his face, complete with rolled-back eyes and a low moan in his chest, made her laugh. Fruit of any kind was a rare treat for a man who survived off of half-rations and whatever he could kill that was safe to eat. There was very little of that latter in the Plaguelands, even at its edge.

When he had swallowed several bites and had the rest of the fruit packed away in a hip-bag, he gestured wildly with the half-eaten one, chewing stolidly until he could swallow and again speak, some thought having clearly occurred to him. ":Does this business north have anything to do with Val, by chance?:"

She blinked, caught off her guard. ":Is it so clearly written on my countenance?:"

He then seemed to realize that he had said a wrong thing, and glanced away from her, hedging. ":Well, no...:" She felt her eyebrows come together in a frown, and her heart sped in her chest.

":Adon:" said she, scowling hawkishly at him, ":is there something you know that you haven't told me?:"

He bought himself precious time by taking another massive bite of fruit, that he would be forced to chew it before he could answer, and Annat felt her ire grow with every passing moment as he chewed, taking his time about packing the half-eaten sunfruit away with its fellows. When he had swallowed, he turned his best doe-eyed look upwards at her, the very image of the wounded, frightened young lad. In truth, he was more than twice her age, a lucky survivor of the Lich King's despoilment of Silvermoon, but one wouldn't know it merely by looking at him. ":Promise you won't be vexed with me, Annat. Lorcan was with him, and he bore the greens and his bow - I'd thought it was another of his jaunts off into the wilderness and questionable company. I'd have sent a message south with one of the couriers if I'd thought anything was amiss.:"

":None of said couriers excepting my uncle reached Light's Hope, at any rate.:" It was grumped under her breath, but, grudgingly, she waved a hand, partly in dismissive, partly a cue for him to continue. There was no use getting angry before she had something to get truly angered about, although as adroitly as Adon skirted the issue, she was sure something worthy of temper was in the offing. ":I promise I won't be cross. Now speak, if you please.:" A pause, as something the knight had said reached the processing centers of her mind. ":What did you mean, questionable company?:"

His gaze skated down and away, like a bird seeking the sanctuary of the underbrush. The pursuant dragonhawk, in this case, yet had him pinned squarely within her sights; but before she could truly put the bite on for information, as it were, Adon spilled the secret of his own volition, albeit rather reluctantly. ":There was... a woman. He seemed rather close with her.:"

":And?:" Annat arched one scarlet eyebrow. ":My brother is - ... was a man full grown. It was long past time he chose a consort.:" Ah, another reminder of her loss, and the _joyous_duties that came with the title of Scion of a Noble House - the obligation to choose and marry a consort and continue the House bloodline. Two thoroughly distressing birds with one stone, or they would have been if she had been less determined to avoid the emotional baggage the concepts carried. ":I must say, I can't blame Val for wanting to have kept his dalliances as far from the eye of Silvermoon court as possible.:"

":It's not that simple, my lady - _'was'_?" Adon's turn for a moment of mental pause as something passed his scanners and flashed a red flag.

":Val's dead.:" She bowed her head and was silent for a heartbeat, a moment of respect in miniature.

":Val's _dead?!_:" Adon openly gaped at her, ceasing his pacing in place, and she looked at him rather quizzically while reining Obsidian about a half-circle, pulling him to an unwilling stop. ":When?:"

":The courier to Uncle didn't tell you?:" This time the frown of her red brows was in confusion, as well as mild suspicion. She leaned over in the saddle somewhat, to bring her face closer to his and study him critically. Obsidian automatically compensated for the shift of her weight, snorting and stamping an arcanite-shod hoof in irritation for her imbalance, but Annat paid him little heed. ":Mother pronounced him dead last winter, seeing he'd been missing for nigh on two years.:"

Now the knight seemed genuinely shocked, moreso than he had been a moment earlier over the reveal of Val's demise. ":Last -? But I _saw_ him last winter, my lady, and he was very much alive at the time!:"

She felt her eyes widen to the size of small jade moons, and a strange mixture of terror and hope surged through her frame; the hand free of Obsidian's reins seized Adon by the front of his armor, at the seam where chestplate met pauldron. ":Are you sure, Adon? Are you _absolutely certain_ it was Val you saw?:"

":Of course!:" His own felfire eyes were startled and confused, his ash-coloured brows up and together, as though silently pleading with the Blood Knight to refrain from spearing the messenger. A hand went to her wrist where she gripped him, death-tight. ":I could hardly mistake him, especially with his chosen companion!:"

":What chosen companion? The woman?:" Annat narrowed her gaze as shrewdness spiked her already volatile emotional cocktail, and she unthinkingly punctuated every sentence was a brief shake, as of something more violent repressed unto a more manageable form. ":I've overlooked something here, haven't I? His ladyfriend was no noblewoman nor any Farstrider, you wouldn't be half so upset if it were. Who was it, then? A maid? A spellbreaker, or one of the apostate Quel'dorei?:"

":Would that it were, it would make matters less complicated.:" Adon groaned it, but gently he patted the back of her wire-taut wrist. ":Kindly let go, my lady?:"

With an almost sheepish air, she uncurled white-knuckled fingers one by one from Adon's kit; he brushed himself off, smiled his forgiving, world-illuminating smile, and then abandoned it by the wayside for a somber, most un-Adonlike expression. He looked troubled enough for Val to be truly deceased, once again avoiding her face with his gaze. ":The woman... she came from the west, and made camp just north of the Elfgate, just far enough to discourage me leaving my post here and investigating. One of Val's... profession, if I had to take a guess. Not many farmers or priests carry longbows, or are followed by leopards. She must have found an alternate pass through the mountains.:"

":Or she skirted the foothills at the edge of Tirisfal, and the Scarlet Monastery.:" That prospect was ominous in the least; the mysterious hunter-woman had not passed through Adon's post, and Mehlar had said nothing to indicate any presence out of ordinary at the Bulwark, leaving her rather disconcerting options regarding passage. The most likely was through the training grounds of the Scarlet Crusaders, understandably (and notoriously) insular and paranoid at their outpost at the edge of the Forsaken's reclaimed kingdom, and not apt to let strangers wander blithely through their territory. She frowned at Adon again and consciously straightened her seat on Obsidian's back, abandoning the closer distance she had annoyed the charger to gain; with his mistress no longer half-falling out of saddle, the stallion settled a touch, though he wicked his tail at his own hindquarters. ":Go on.:"

":She camped at the Gate three days, and at the end of the third day, during a snow, Val appeared from the north.:" Adon risked a skirling glance at Annat. ":Cloaked, but he wore Farstrider greens and had his bow, and Lorcan. They... greeted each other, and left west the way the woman had arrived, camp, cats and caboodle.:"

She felt her eyes harden into a sharp, intense glare - why the fumble? The careful turns of phrase? ":Adon, you are not being entirely truthful.:"

Adon grimaced and rolled his eyes heavenward, as though consulting the skies for guidance, or perhaps aegis from an easily-provoked Knight of the Blood. ":They were... very familiar with each other. Enough so to give your Lady Mother a _stroke_.:"

":We've crossed this territory once already, Adon! What is the terrible secret of Val's consort that you are so _very_ loath to tell?:" She slapped a palm to the saddlehorn to make a popping sound. ":My brother lives when I thought him dead, Adon, and nothing could taint the happiness of that knowledge, not even if you told me this moment that his consort was -:" She struggled a moment for the appropriate image, ":- was a _dairy cow_ late of Stormwind! But if he lives, I mean to find him, and to find him I need to know _who she was!_:"

Agonized, he blurted it at last, eyes flinched shut against the storm and as breathless as if he had run a marathon to deliver the news. ":She was _Kaldorei!_:"

Stunned silence greeted him, and slowly he lifted open one felfire eye to espy Annat's reaction.

She sat her mount by virtue only of Obsidian's exquisite sense of her balance; from the look on her paled face, the bottom of her world might have fallen out. It was entirely too much to handle in the span of a single day - Mehlar's appearance and departure, her severance from the contingent at Light's Hope, Mother's Wretched condition, and most of all Val's death and consequent resurrection, but now this confession from Adon's own lips -

A night elf. Val Sunborn, Farstrider Lieutenant and Scion of House Sunborn, had run off with _a night elf,_ for destinations and intentions unknown_._ The implications were horrific, the tangled web of the inevitable consequences impossible to rend or unravel, should the knowledge of what Val had done spread to the Silvermoon High Court -

Part of her wished that her ineffable, airheaded brother, much as she loved him and adored his company and kind heart, had had the good sense to stay dead.

Her overtaxed emotions shut down then; she slid, unthinkingly and automatically, into the stylized decorum and almost ritualized patterns of thought that marked the highest-born among the Highborne. Court mannersims slid over her like an icy gown that had gone unworn for years, yet still fit like a glove at all the right places, and the change in her was so immediate and stark that Adon, wide-eyed, stepped back from her charger in startlement. Said charger whinnied beneath her, shrill and tinny from the echoes of the plane of his birth, and Obsidian whirled upon the frightened knight, sensing weakness in Adon and mercilessness in his mistress. The Thalassian stallion would have happily bitten great bloody pieces from Adon until the poor knight was reduced to nothing, but Annat pulled the reins sharply, hauling short the first of what she was sure was to be many snaps of his teeth. The air inches from Adon's nose was quite thoroughly macerated.

":Who else have you told?:" The chill in her voice and overtaking her heart could have cooled Naxxramas itself, and sharp contrast to her earlier pleasure at his company. The Sindorei never were a stable breed.

":No one!:" He shook his head fervently and backed another step; only Annat's will kept the horse from advancing on the ground Adon gave.

":Keep it as such.:" Her expression was bland, the set of her shoulders stern, but every word was rimed with frost fit to quench the fiery Sunborn heart within. ":I'll not have the name of House Sunborn tarnished any further than it already is.:"

A breath of silence ruled the gap between them, the friendship injured, perhaps not mortally, but dearly enough. Adon was the first to break it, with a simple, ":I'm sorry, Annat.:"

":So am I.:" It was almost whispered. Obsidian whinnied again and tensed the muscles of his shoulders and hind, threatening either a leap forward or a rear; either case having the undesirable outcome of placing Adon within dangerous proximity of the charger's dinnerplate-sized hooves, Annat jerked him sharply to one side to face the pass again, the stallion having made a complete circle almost in place. Then, an yet-cool offering of peace: ":I will ask your stipend from Tranquillien be made larger. You're far too thin, and when a Scion speaks, others must listen.:"

":It will be hard, my lady.:" His felfire eyes tightened at the corners, mouth a grim line, and she knew he did not speak of the tasking of his rations.

":I go nonetheless. A Sunborn stands their ground.:"

":So does a Dawnblade:" he reminded her, with the unspoken addition, _and look what happened to them_.

She suffered a brief, vivid image of Alaric ablaze with Light, dripping with gore and power as he clove enemies in half with each swing, yet still surrounded on all sides by a growing army of the blighted dead; she flinched and shook it away before it could overcome her careful pretense of ironclad control. ":Justice for our people.:" It was a pretty sentiment, but hollow, cold, like she wished her heart could be at its core, instead of merely buried beneath the snow. Above all, however, it was final, a tacit dismissal. She spoke it less because she felt its sentiment than because Adon wished to hear it.

He nodded, the hint understood, but he stayed rooted in place and did not risk Obisidan's teeth for a pat at his withers, as he would have before. That familiarity had yet to heal, her sharpness with him this time imperfectly forgiven. ":Sun guide you.:" Spoken out of ritual and little more. She could not even claim that she was undeserving of his lack of warmth.

Oh well; time enough to repair the damage done, should she survive the journey north, and what lay at journey's end.

She let Obsidian have his head then, a touch at his ribs, a slacking of her stern hand at the reins, and the stallion responded as she hoped he would - pointed for Silvermoon, he fair surged forward, the arcanite of his shoes striking blue sparks and an echoing, a belling tone when they struck the line of cobbles that marked the Lordaeran border. Adon was left in their dust, the mountain pass sped and became a terra-cotta blur at the edges of her eyes; she did not look back, never back, obsessed with their forward movement and what lay ahead of them.

The Thalassian Pass rose up around them as Obsidian flew on, ruddy hues giving way to subdued shades of grey and green whilst the horse traversed the no-man's-land between the Plaguelands and Quel'thalas; the Outer Elfgate passed overhead mere strides later, its graceful arches bannered still with the haunted, tattered standards of the Scourge war-parties that had once marched here. The snow had long since melted, and any trace of Val or his... associate's camp obliterated by the elements - in any case, they sped past too swiftly for Annat to examine the place overmuch, and she shivered in her soul to dwell there even so brief a time. This was where it had all began. The place where Arthas had entered the lands of the Highborne and begun his systematic destruction of her people. Had he stood among the now-ruined Elfgate once, feet upon its once pristine stone, and looked north, smiling, to the shining gem that was Silvermoon? What mad thoughts had coursed through the Lich King's shattered psyche when he razed the village to the west? When he founded Deatholme upon its ruin? When he marched his brutal army through the Ghostlands to Eversong and Silvermoon, intent on genocide, missing in his witchhunt only the bare handfuls with the sense or foresight to be well away from the capitol?

Away they ran from the battered corpse of the Elfgate, away from the reminders of the past. The High Road became once more as its name suggested, a high way, the land sloping gently off away from its edges as if to raise it up upon dais, to give it accolade and respect. It had once been paved in the same white and gold stone that the Gate was built upon, that the great city was founded upon; now the stones had all but disappeared beneath the inexorable march of soil and growth. On occasion Obsidian's hooves would strike one, and the sound would echo as it had at the border of Lordaeron, causing great bats to startle at their nests and tawny Ghostpaw lynxes to raise their heads before prowling once more into the shadows. Freed of the claustrophobic confines of the pass, the Ghostlands sprawled about them, and little was it changed from Annat's memory of years before: rolling grey-green hills, dotted with hints of blue and the twisting, pale shapes of the skeletal trees that clung stubbornly to life in the tainted land, and though it was approaching now high summer the land was ever shrouded in a cloak of mist. Here the influence of Deatholme was yet felt, the Scourge citadel sapping away at the life of the land, for the Dead Scar was exactly that, a scar upon the lovely face of Quel'thalas. It rode pillion with her, it seemed, constant reminder and companion, at the edge of her view to the west, shameless and bold and refusing to be hidden by the fog. As if to taunt it, Obsidian slowed his pace, dropping smoothly to his easy lope. His legs well and truly stretched for the first time in the journey, and his thirst for a wild sprint through the landscape satiated for the nonce, his canter seemed liquid and almost sedate by comparison.

She glanced to the east, and though distance and the fog concealed it, she knew that Andilien lay there, fallow, ruined, inhabited only by the gusty memories of those who had once lived there; she would not visit ever again, had she the choice, though she knew that, by now, those who yet had claim to the property would like nothing more than to see the summer estate returned to its former glory. For Annat, it could never be. It was a place of dust, shadows and a child's fear, now. Further east still than Andilien was Amani Pass, far beyond her sight, huddled at the easternmost extremes of Sindorei land; the trolls clung stubbornly to the foothills and claimed the land was theirs, and even now Farstriders skirmished with them daily, an endless stalemate in the argument of to whom with the realm belong. There were great gates at the end of the pass, she knew - she had dared ride so far once, when she had been young and Auri had panicked, and carried the young Sunborn all unknowing beyond the Amani lines to the steps of a great stone temple. There had been wardrums then, and chanting beyond the walls, and screams. Annat had turned back, ridden for home at a pace that had left poor Auri steaming and blowing in the autumn night, and never spoken a word of it to anyone, though she suspected Val had guessed where she had gone that night, if Father had not.

Such adventures seemed of a different world, a different life now. The Amani Pass held mysteries she would never discover, and must not contemplate. She turned her eyes northward, altered her seat subtly, carried herself a touch higher. She was the Scion of House Sunborn, now. Much as she would have loved to have been among the first contingent to breach those ancient walls, much as she ached to be there when the secrets of the Amani were wrenched from the shadows and held up to the sun's light, she would have to pretend that such pursuits were beneath her.

She could not bring herself to abandon them, in her heart of hearts. But to pretend to do so? Pretend, she could manage.

Obsidian walked. The landscape passed, the permanent dusk became a deeper twilight, and the shadows lengthened. Eventually the High Road rose up from the land about it, angling for altitude as it skirted the exposed roots of a crop of mountain, and as it did so it broadened and became paler, somewhat less unkempt, till at last it had pooled silver in the shadow of Sungraze Peak. Tranquillien, too, had changed little in the years of Annat's southern deployment. Before the Lich King's march, it had been little more than a glorified coach stop, a place to feed and water a change of horse before forging onward south, north or east. Afterward, it had become a staging point for the blood elves' invasion of their own lands. A few of the faces had changed; it was to be expected that many would fall in the ongoing war of attrition to regain Quel'thalas. What disheartened her was that so many of the faces that had changed now belonged to Forsaken, vanguards from the Undercity under blessing and aegis of Silvermoon's tacit ally, the Banshee Queen. Sylvanas Windrunner had been Quel'dorei once, or so the stories claimed - killed, then resurrected by mad Arthas as his servant, until she broke free of the shackles with which he bound her will. Now she ruled the undead who had had the strength to do as she did, and while no one was quite certain how the unlikely alliance had come about (for certainly lonely, proud Silvermoon had a dearth of friends among the peoples of Azeroth) it still triggered a deep-seated unease in Annat, to see rotted corpses merrily shambling about their business in Tranquillien.

Father had once told her that what no one among the Knights remembered anymore, was that each and every undead corpse had once been a living, breathing person. The knowledge that certain of those who had fallen to the Scourge had regained their free will, whatever the method, and were now considered allies or even friends, did nothing to aid in her suppression of her battle-baptized reflexes. The silhouette of an undead monster provoked one and only one response in those who had served even a single tour at Light's Hope, and her fingers itched on the reins as Obisidian crossed into Tranquillien, she controlling tightly the desire to rampage ahorse through them all and cut every last one of them down.

This was not the Plaguelands. Tranquillien was far from Light's Hope, and the Forsaken were not the Scourge. Nevertheless, Obsidian either did not know the difference, or did not care to make the distinction that his mistress so carefully drew. A male Forsaken in dark leathers passed in front of horse and rider, a touch too close for the Thalassian stallion's liking; with Annat tense and distracted, he seized upon the chance and lunged forward with his teeth, which met with a loud clacking sound scant inches from the Forsaken's shoulder.

"Oi!" The Forsaken twisted like a snake and threw himself to the ground out of Obsidian's easy reach; Annat reined the stallion in, reminded once more of the harsh realities of claiming a fractious warhorse in an area with strangers. The Forsaken clambered to his feet, made odd signs at her with his hands and grimaced, presumably in scowl, but with so much of his face missing many of the normal cues were altered or entirely gone. His words were harsh and hoarse, not Thalassian but a rough conglomerate cousin of Common that had evolved through use of needing a common language. "Wot the bleedin' hell d'ya think yer doing, lady?!"

"My apologies," she murmured, in the High Common, the tongue of Korfax and his ilk - and what this Forsaken had been before Arthas's armies had laid hands upon him. It was close enough to be understood, at least. Her attentions once more on her mischievous horse, she sent a touch to his ribs and stepped him sideways, giving the now road-dusty and spitting Forsaken wide berth as she proceeded forth.

"'Pologies? 'Pologies my left anklebone! Prissy, arr'gant blood elves!" he yelled at her retreating back. "Think ya can get away wi' wa'ever the hell ya want! Oi! Git back here, I ain't done yellin' at you yet!"

In light of the Forsaken's running mouth, Obsidian received rather light discipline; a swat at the neck, and a stern, straight-faced ":Bad horse:" was all he earned for his contempt, and Annat could have sworn that the charger's whuffling snort sounded like dark, equine laughter. Gamely enough he went where she directed, clip-clopping to what passed for the courtyard of Tranquillien's miniscule inn, and with every step they were harried by the cursing Forsaken, tracked by the gazes of anyone and everyone who could hear his angry howling. Most, if not all the inhabitants of Tranquillien had stuck their heads out of buildings or otherwise directed their attention to the commotion, allowing Annat's wandering eye to catalogue the number of Forsaken inhabitants of the tiny haven. Too many. Too many faces that had been here scant years previous, and were for all she knew now wandering the Dead Scar as the Lich King's minions...

She turned Obsidian into the opening between the inn and the next nearest structure, dismounted in the inn's shadow and threw the reins over the stallion's head so that they whiffed his ears, but before the stallion could think to shy out of her grasp, she reached to firmly entangle one hand in the cheekpiece of his bridle. It took a fair portion of her strength to drag his head down to her level - Obisidian was corded with muscles like steel girders, and could probably lift her off her feet if he truly wanted - but then, _he_ had chosen _her_ as his mistress, and it would hardly serve him to injure her. Who would feed and groom him then, or ride him into battle that he might make bloody, joyful war upon her enemies? As Val would have said, she certainly had Obsidian's number.

His head brought down to her considerably shorter level, she hauled it around that one enormous ruby eye might fixate on her, Annat frowning sternly and speaking in a low, quiet voice as if he could understand every word she spoke. Though perhaps few shared such a high opinion of his intelligence, she was wholly certain that he could. ":That Forsaken might have retroactively earned himself a nip, but once we reach Silvermoon, you _will_ behave yourself.:" He pinned his ears back, and the pupil of that scarlet eye pinwheeled and shrank as he made to shake his head, either in response or to free himself from her grasp, but her grip was as implacable as her scowl. ":There are no enemies there that can be fought with steel and teeth. You will be the very _model_ of Thalassian perfection for so long as it is required of you, or I swear upon Father's grave I will put you in the calmest, most distant and boring pasture I can locate, with nothing to do but graze and no one to harry or frighten aside from the occasional bird. _And_ I will feed your apples to the nearest hungry hawkstrider. Am I understood, destrier?:"

He snorted and tossed his head as much as possible, given his position, but the horse would have had better luck convincing the sun to rise win the west; eventually, he willfulness collapsed in the face of his mistress's rebuke, his ears unpinned, and he whuffled softly in sign of acquiescence. Annat favoured him with a smile and released his bridle, giving him an affectionate pat on the neck - the threat of absolute peace and quiet, if nothing else, was an effective tool in persuading the hot-blooded charger to behave, although she had an inkling the thought of a mannerless hawkstrider, with room in its head only for violent bird-of-prey thoughts, being given the feast of his Argent apples also had somewhat to do with it. Thinking on this, she dangled the proverbial carrot in front of the stallion's nose: ":If you reach House Sunborn without having bitten, overrun, kicked or spit at anyone, I will peel one apple for you.:"

Another snort. She was uncertain how he managed it, but Obsidian had the grace to look insulted.

":Alright, _both_ apples, you greedy git. But you had best look your most impressive. I want the nobility of Silvermoon quaking in their slippers.:"

He whuffed, as though his appearing in any way unimpressive was an utter impossibility. She shook her head, smiling still, and tugged at the reins, prompting him to follow. Before the coming of the King, Tranquillien had been considered too small to merit even basic livery facilities; with Andilien's famed stables to the south and Silvermoon to the north, there had simply been no need for any travellers, either coming or going, to overnight in Tranquillien with their steeds. In the years after the Scourge and their ruler, however, Andilien lay if not precisely in ruins, then in disrepair enough to discourage squatters, and it was a very long ride from the southern border of Quel'thalas to the chipped jewel in its crown at Silvermoon. Tranquillien's so-called citizenry had, then, done the best they could to fill the need with what supplies they had available.

It was, essentially, a three-walled shack floored with straw and built beyond the back wall of the inn, just big enough to accomodate a pair of hawkstriders side by side if they didn't mind getting a bit cozy in the process. Obsidian, considerably larger than any avian mount, barely fit within, and even then only by virtue of squeezing in diagonally after the removal of very nearly every bit of tack he possessed. The saddlebags and tack, she left in the inner corner not occupied by Obsidian's hindquarters; Annat was reasonably certain that not even the most desperate or foolhardy thief would dare brave Obsidian's sentinel presence to rifle among her belongings. That business done with and his halter loosely tied to the shack's supports, the rest of the nightly ritual was seen to completion: Obsidian was cleaned, fed and pampered within an inch of his life, and at the end of it he stood gleaming, while his mistress was sweaty, hair unkempt, and smelling of horse and brimstone.

_The sacrifices one makes_, she thought wryly as Obsidian dipped his muzzle to drink deep of clean water, and she left him to his own devices.

The tone of Tranquillien had considerably calmed while Annat was out of sight. The Forsaken that Obsidian had tried to take a bite out of had absented himself, ostensibly going about his own business in or about the townlet; night was fallen and glowballs had awakened, floating placidly in their wrought cages. A by-product of Sindorei addiction to the arcane, glowballs were a feature on every street in Quel'thalas, safer than open flame for illumination, or so the proponents of the magics claimed. It would have been closer to the truth to say that they were symbols of status, even among the arrogant, high-blooded Sindorei. Even Tranquillien boasted a few, showering their pale light to combat the shadows beyond the edge of the High Way. Only the Flightmaster remained out-of-doors after the sun had set, the company of his bats all he desired or could ever need in the way of company or protection - any Scourge fool enough to compromise Skymaster Sunwing's safety would soon have a legion of trained flyers chomping at the figurative bit to see it torn to pieces.

Sunwing was busy enough seeing to his winged children, and Annat let him be; instead she made her way up the steps of the inn, and into its sheltering light and warmth. The building itself was small, but every blood elf in Tranquillien without pressing reason to be elsewhere had squeezed themselves into its cozy confines. Benches, tables and a smattering of cushions for relaxing on the floor were everywhere and generally occupied, the atmosphere one of easy comraderie and full of quiet, but cheerful chatter. Supper bubbled merrily over the tiny hearth, tended by the innkeep, a slender dirty-blonde male in green and tan; his conversation partner was a lithe man with spikes of auburn hair, Master Chef Mouldier, the first to notice an entrance made by one not of Tranquillien's own.

Knowledge spread like contagion, and all conversation ceased, as the Sindorei collective studied the ragged, dust-covered Blood Knight and pondered what they should do. Annat spared them the agony of indecision. ":My apologies for the intrusion. Innkeeper Kalarin, is the upstairs suite occupied?:"

":Not at present, my lady, no.:" Kalarin blinked, then squinted one eye at her, as though she were a figure from some half-remembered dream. ":_Sunborn?_ Alaric's daughter?:"

":The same.:" She nodded, weary. Would that this would be the last time she needs must endure the repetitive nature of recognition. She was sensing an emergent pattern, and thought it might persist all the way to the High Court: _Annat Sunborn, Alaric's daughter? _Shortly followed by some comment on how she had grown - Kalarin opened his mouth for exactly such a statement, but Annat hadn't the patience for the ensuing conversation. ":I've ridden this day from Light's Hope Chapel, in the Plaguelands, and would like very much to have a soft bed for the night. And a bath.:"

Kalarin hardly blinked, even with every pair of eyes in the common room resting upon him. ":You've coin?:"

":Of course. And more, if you throw in a hot meal.:" The gazes of their audience pingponged back to her before returning to Kalarin, who drew himself to his feet and smiled.

":Welcome to my humble abode.:" He sketched a bow and stepped forward from the throng, presumptuous enough to take her elbow, as if to steer her upstairs. Annat allowed it; such behaviour would be commonplace in Silvermoon. A glance over his shoulder, for those watching him like a dragonhawk: ":I must see to my guest. Eat, drink, be merry - I'll return soon enough.:"

Out the doors and up the wide, curving ramp went they, arm in arm. Obsidian's shack was visible below, and Obsidian's nose sticking out from under it. Kalarin saw, arched one blonde brow, and looked promptingly at Annat. She shrugged, too tired to argue. ":Oh, all right, stable fee for Obsidian as well.:"

":Very gracious of you.:" It was said ironically. They reached the top of the ramp then and the curtained doorway, and with a wave of the hand and a tingle of arcane power, the glowballs rose from their tumescent sleep to float, placidly in their cages around the suite. Four spacious walls, a soft bed, a pile of cushions, and a stand for armor; it seemed, after years of her cramped closet in Light's Hope, like paradise given form. Kalarin released her and gestured expansively. ":Your quarters, my lady. Are they satisfactory?:"

"Mmm." She would have settled for a cot under the stars at that point, but had the presence of mind to nod coolly for Kalarin's benefit. ":See to the bath, if you would?:"

":Oh, oh, yes, of course.:" Kalarin grinned and bowed again, and promptly strode back through the curtained door, whistling.

Blessed silence. One aching joint at a time, Annat flexed, stretched and relaxed herself, sat upon the bed, began the laborious task of removing her plate armor; the stand at one wall had a place for everything, and once the opalescent white mail had been removed, she sat upon the bed and studied her armor for long, thoughtful moments. The ghost of her own shape, presented in a hardened steel shell, seemed to nod in prayerful meditation.

The ghostwood sticks she pulled from her hair, fluffed the scarlet mane, aware of the cloud of dust she was releasing over the coverlet. Ah, well, it could be washed, but oh, how she wanted to close her eyes and drop asleep, bath or no bath... Perhaps it wouldn't hurt, she pursuaded herself, to lie down for just a moment, until the promised cleansing could commence...

When Kalarin returned, prepared to cater to his noble guest's every whim, he found her stretched across the coverlet, ghostwood hairsticks still in hand, and dared not disturb her save to drape a comforter across her slumbering form.

The bath and the meal could wait until morning.


	4. Silvermoon

_"To ease your mind in the receiving of this missive, I shall say right off that all is well here in Silvermoon; I know you are desperate for news of the little ones, my love, and so news of them you shall have. Val has been invested as a Farstrider corporal, and received his greens not two weeks gone. He prayed you would be there, but he is a man grown, as we are oft to forget, and understood that your duties with the Silver Hand lay elsewhere. He leaves for his first walk of duty in a week's time, sent to Kalimdor to explore the Ashenvale as his inaugural assignment. Annie grows like bloodthistle, all lank and weeds, and becomes bolder every day - it is a difficult age where she stands now, too young yet for apprenticeship but verging upon too old for the nursery. She misses you dearly and talks nonstop about how, when she is old enough, she will be a shining hero of the Light like her father. Mehlar has allowed her to borrow Elise while he is home on leave, and she practices riding daily. Hillex our youngest is somewhat less troublesome than his sister, being not yet old enough to entangle himself in true mischief, but he is showing a disconcerting trend towards summoning house-shadows. I had hoped if a prodigy were to come of House Sunborn, it would be one who took after my own arcane arts. Ah, well; I shall look into finding him a suitable tutor once he is a touch older. In the meantime, Alaric, my love - please visit to Silvermoon, and to me. We miss you. I love you. Come home to your family, and send Mehlar to the Lightbringer in your stead; Uther is a good man, and he will understand."_

- Gwynn Sunborn, in a letter to her husband, Alaric Dawnblade, written shortly before Silvermoon seceded from the Alliance. Excerpted from _The Sunborn Correspondences._

* * *

Enfolded in the arms of her homeland, Annat Sunborn slept, deeply and purely and well, and though she hazed to wakefulness with the knowledge that she had dreamed of the Green Place, as always, that dream would not stay with her - the more she reached for it, the faster the memory slipped through her fingers, like grains of finest sand.

The dawn crept into the suite as though afraid of being caught, blue-grey, gentle and less a breaking-through of the light than a general lightening of a fog. The suite was made different by the light of morning, all silhouettes and shadow, the glowballs drowsing in their cages; muzzy with sleep, ennui having accumulated in her limbs, Annat stretched her full length on the soft bed and luxuriated for precious seconds in the sensation of space and light -

Space. Light. She sat up, not sharply, having learnt that lesson rather harshly in her closet in Light's Hope, but if years of inflicting purple bruises on her forehead had not schooled into her very bones that caution, she would have sat bolt upright nonetheless. This was most assuredly not her closet next to the chapel vestry/armory, and her heart thudding in her throat, she groped about for a weapon in the blanket pooled about her hips. The ghostwood hairpins came easily to hand, and for a breath she wielded them like daggers against the paling darkness, reacting to her disorientation in the best way a Blood Knight knows how.

The memories came tumbling one over the other after a moment of panicked silence, like a litter of playful lynx cubs rolling crost her mind. Mehlar. The message. Adon, and the pass, and the Ghostlands and Tranquillien, and most of all her recall to Silvermoon, and duty there. The hairpins lowered, slowly; she felt rather a fool for several moments then, and cast her jadefire eyes about the room. Alone, of course. No one to witness her momentary panic save the shape of her armor on its stand at one wall of the cushioned, curtained suite. The blanket she threw aside, stepped with light feet upon the rug that further muffled her steps. All was silent in Tranquillien, to her keenly listening ear, and carefully she padded to the suite entrance at the top of the ramp, pushed aside the brightly-coloured thick curtain that served as its barring door.

The Sungraze, mountain shelter that provided Tranquillien with an unassailable east flank, blocked from her the spectacle of the sunrise, and before her brain could command her feet otherwise, she was striding down the ramp, down the inn steps, past the apothecary's outdoor bazaar. None challenged her, nor was she hailed; not even the Scourge or Forsaken were awake at this hour, some unwritten, unspoken truce reached, some sacred span of time set aside for the living and the dead to reach a brief and transient peace. When she stood at the southern boundary of the tiny village, then and only then did the foothills of the Sungraze fall away, descending like great stairs or steppes in miniature from where she stood on the High Road, and she was afforded the sight she had desperately desired.

The morn was cold as spring rain and the dawn so brilliant it was like a physical blow; the sun was a white coin on the distant horizon, mounting above the edifice of Zul'Aman, the bringer of warmth and life prey to that trick of early morn when a mortal might gaze upon it without fear of blindness. The newborn sun had burned away enough of the clouds and mist that the sky was visible, and a brassy gold cloaked about the mountains like a King's coronet, fading brightly into a halo of silvery white before it shaded into a vivid, perfect blue at the zenith of the heavens. Oh, soon enough, she knew, the mists would roll forward again to blanket the land, and the clouds would whitewash the sky, but Annat's heart swelled to see that lovely sunrise. A thousand scarlet dawns in the Plaguelands could not compare to the magnificence of this multihued skyborne painting, and if ever she had needed a Sign to know in her heart that she was most ardently welcomed home, that beautiful morn would have been it.

She stood there, like the village fool, drinking in the sunrise until the sun had cleared the mountains, and the mists threatened to absorb it once again; Annat turned her back reluctantly on the spectacle then, before that lovely vision could be tainted with the shadows that permeated the Ghostlands, and retraced her steps among the white stones of the High Way. Innkeeper Kalarin waited seated on the steps of the inn, fresh-faced and cheerful. Perhaps her footsteps hadn't been as silent as she had thought.

":Good morn.:" Kalarin grinned at her as she approached, and the man rose to his feet. ":Ready for that bath now, my lady?:"

":And the meal, if you would, Innkeeper.:" Had she fallen asleep before she had cleaned up, or eaten, or even undressed? She must have, though the mention of food did not yet stir her neglected stomach to waking. Kalarin smiled, white teeth, very even. It reminded her with a pang of Korfax, whom had done the same, this very hour not the morning before.

":I'll see to the breakfast. The tub is out of doors at this hour, though if you wished I could have it brought up to the suite -:"

":And wake all of Tranquillien in the process?:" Annat grimaced in distaste. ":Obsidian will be enough guard against prying eyes. Though I had hoped for a _warm_ bath.:" Kalarin detected the notes of yearning wistfulness in her voice, and laughed quietly, a sound much like the mist - quiet, creeping, getting everywhere before one had noticed.

":It can be made shortly so.:" He winked, but did not elaborate, and thus in such confidence did Annat proceed for the bath. She padded past Obsidian in his shack to do so, the stallion dozing afoot, perhaps dreaming Hell-stallion dreams; she touched his withers lightly to inform him of her presence, and he opened one ember-eye to confirm it was indeed his mistress in such close proximity, before he returned to drowsing. Her things were, as predicted, left untouched, and she ducked around the horse to raid the saddlebags for clean clothing, soap, a brush. Thus laden, she investigated the other side of the stable wall. Here was the pump she had used the night before, to water her thirsty stallion, but a new addition to the cramped landscape was a round wooden tub, like one might use for washing clothing, a pile of fluffy white linens, and a steaming towel in a bucket that proved, on inspection, to be a wrapped black stone, searing hot to the touch.

Her scarlet brows went up, as did her estimation of the innkeeper. Clever Kalarin.

Water she pumped into the tub, then tipped the lavastone into the water, where it spat and sizzled before settling angrily at the bottom, heat radiating outward from it in nigh-invisible waves. It was once referred to by her mother as a commoner's trick, and by her father as an infinitely useful heavensend; a special kind of stone, left to bake in the embers of a fire overnight, would retain and release that heat for hours afterward, even if doused in water. A simple way to heat bathwater, and Annat held suspicion that even once she had exhausted the bath's usefulness, the lavastone would yet be hot enough to fry an egg upon. For a span of moments she let it heat the water, stripped to the skin, ran the brush experimentally through her hair, then left it and her ghostwood hairpins upon the pile of fresh clothing. The soap, her courage, and the necklace that lolled about her collar were the only things she girded about her as she stepped into the tub.

Heavensend, indeed. So long as she was not so foolish as to step upon the lavastone and earn a burned foot for her troubles, she could soak her aching muscles as though steeping herself like leaves for tea. Precious minutes she spent simply _being,_ ridiculously grateful for this simple amenity, an uninterrupted bath in warm water, with no other she-soldiers to share it with; after so long spent either bathing communally when the water was available, or dunking herself in cold water out of sheer desire to be alone, it was purest frivolous luxury to have a hot bath all to herself. The miseries of the Plaguelands and Light's Hope seemed to melt from her bones, and her wire-taut conscience. She played idly with her necklace for a time, a simple black corded affair bearing a green fel iron ring turned pendant as sole decoration. Freed of its usual cage of clothing, it tried, vainly, to float in the water, and when it realized its defeat, instead settled grumpily to rest below the cup where her collarbones met.

_Enough of that_, she sighed when all the soreness in her joints had loosened, and sitting up in the bathwater, she took the soap in hand and worked with a will, scrubbing until her skin was red and raw and the strands of her hair gleamed like wet rubies; as the layers of dust and sweat were lifted, white and pink scars striped along her limbs, the hard-earned souveneirs of her tour in tainted Lordaeron. The bath turned grey as it collected the grime, but at the end of the effort she was pleased to discover pale flesh beneath, even marked in places by glittering scars; the mark at her chest where the Shard had almost pierced her heart and, ironically, saved her life, was just as strawberry-red as the day it had been struck, the one scar among many that refused to fade. When she rose from the water to wrap herself in dry linens and squeeze the moisture from her hair, she felt, for the first time in a long time, like a person again.

Obsidian nickered from round the corner, his great black nose visible and twitching as he smelled the air. Breakfast; he could scent it, as could she, and now that she was clean and dry her empty stomach reared its hungering head and roared, demanding tribute. Clothing was procured then - soft dove-grey breeches, a white lace-up shirt, socks, boots. The road-filthy clothing was stuffed into a saddlebag, coin to be paid Kalarin extracted and pocketed, a measure of grain poured for Obsidian; he dipped his head and munched contentedly as she pulled the brush through her hair, ghostwood hairpins in her teeth, staring at the wet linens and used bathwater.

What to do? Leave them for someone else to clean up? After so long in the Plaguelands, where water clean enough to be identified was scarce enough, it seemed an almost blasphemous waste to leave such a mess behind her, or pour out even water grey with dirt and soap. Blessedly, Kalarin solved the dilemma for her: ":Done bathing yet, Sunborn? Come eat your breakfast before someone else decides to do so for you!:"

She made a noise of assertion through her teeth, threw the brush atop her things in Obsidian's shadow, and as she mounted the inn steps was twisting her wet hair up into its battle-bun to spear the ghostwood pins solidly through it. The inn was empty and dim, only one glowball roused to illuminate the interior, one of the smaller tables assembled and set against one wall with a companion stool; upon that table lay a spread that was modest by Sindorei standards, but a feast by those of the Argent Dawn's, and Annat's belly reminded her sternly, almost painfully, that she had not stopped to so much as nibble her rations since leaving Light's Hope the morning prior. Kalarin himself sat upon the hearth, humming cheerfully as he poked the coals to life, resolutely seeking to thwart the chill of morning.

":Tranquillien yet sleeps, if you wondered, Innkeeper. Even the Scourge do not stir, but yet you rise with the sun?:" This she said as she beelined for the stool and laden trestle, trying her best to make the walk stately and partly failing due to the motivating force of her hunger. If Kalarin noticed, he did not make comment.

":I know your breed, Lady Sunborn.:" He grinned it, watching with amused felfire eyes as she attempted to simultaneously tear into her breakfast, yet eat daintily. ":I was here when you and your father passed through, oh, four years ago now? There's no patience in the lot of you Blood Knights when you're after somewhat. If you're bound for Silvermoon - and I can hardly imagine you would be bound anywhere else - you'll want to be on your way bright and early.:"

":A hot meal and a bath at an hour when any sane man would be abed. Earning your generous fee, as it were?:" She smiled prettily, to take the sting out of what in Silvermoon would have been a barbed insult. Kalarin was an amatuer, however, compared to the veterans of the court; he returned with a bright laugh.

":As you say, my lady! Travellers, true ones, not Farstriders, are something of a rarity in my house, and I remember Sir Dawnblade's courtesy when he was here.:" He tilted his head then and studied her closely, and Annat sensed with almost precognitive accuracy the gossip-hunting question that was to come. ":It's true then? Really true? Sir Dawnblade and the Dayheart twins, and the young spellbreaker, all dead?:"

":It's true.:" She hid her flare of irritation by drinking of the glass of cold, clear water. Would every curious blood elf ask her the same questions, as though by the asking they expected the tale to change? ":I buried Father myself, per his wishes. Brightblaze and the Dayhearts were... sent to Silvermoon for interment.:"

Kalarin shook his head and tsked. ":What a shame.:"

Annat nodded and flashed a watered-down version of a saddened smile, thinking to herself, _You haven't the first what a shame it is. They died and I didn't; don't you think I know you wish to ask me why I stand here when my betters do not, but you haven't the courage for such a question? Your generous fee is at stake, because the nobility pays for discretion, and pays well. Even you would not risk such merely to satisfy your curiosity._

But they would not be so shy at Silvermoon, and more prone to silvered deceptions. With Gwynn permanently indisposed and the Scionship passed in absentia, there would be whispers, eventually if not already, that she had had a rather more active and malicious role in the downfall of Alaric Dawnblade; rumours designed by Sunborn enemies to undermine her, and thus leave the House even more vulnerable to those who would prey upon it. It was the kind of charge that was ridiculous, but plausible due only to the lack of her presence. Insecure paranoia, the trait of any well-adjusted Sindorei born of the High Court.

":There is a matter I needs must see to before I leave Tranquillien, good innkeeper, :" said Annat after a breath, and Kalarin looked up expectantly, eyebrows arched in waiting. ":You must know of Adon, at the southern border? I believe his stipend originates here in Tranquillien. I wish it enlargened.:"

Kalarin blinked, expression one of vague startlement, as though he were unsure he had heard her correctly. ":Adon's _stipend_.:"

":Yes.:" A sip of cool water; she did not look directly at him, but rather concentrated on her plate. ":If coin is a matter of issue, I can arrange for an allowance from House Sunborn, which I expect will be used _primarily_ in the procurement of items such as, oh, fresh fruit for the man?:"

The innkeep stared stupidly at her for another moment, but his Sindorei instinct for survival kicked in where the man had not the sense to do so himself, and his head bowed. ":Of course, my lady. As the Scion wishes.:"

_Aha._ So news had spread this far south then, of Gwynn's Wretched state, when Annat herself had said nothing of her new status nor her reason for travel north to Silvermoon. Befitting a lady of a high house, however, she merely lifted her glass in acknowledgement of Kalarin's statement, and shortly set about demolishing the contents of her plate, combining food for thought with food for the body.

Breakfast passed in relative silence then; Annat luxuriated in the quiet, in the absence of the clangour caused by inhabitance of a space housing near on to sixty soldiers, when it was never meant to hold more than a third of that at best. The fire crackled merrily in its pit. The blood elves breathed. Food was eaten and drink sipped, sacrifices to appease the ravenous beast that lived in the paladin's belly. When every last crumb of Kalarin's spread lay devoured and the village of Tranquillien had begun to stir, she pulled from her belt the coinpurse, laden with the innkeeper's spoils. Earned well enough on the bath alone, she reasoned, weighing the gold in her hand; and no use for making an enemy here in Tranquillien by shorting Kalarin his promised wages. A reputation for generosity could well too be useful in days to come. The pouch she set whole and undilute on the table, at the edge of her plate.

She saw the innkeep smile close-lipped and bow his head again out of the corner of her eye, but paid him no heed as she rose. ":My gratitude, Innkeeper.:"

":Onward and forward?:" Kalarin rose as well and stepped forth, gathering plate and fork and glass, and carefully skirting round the fat coinpurse as good manners dictated. He gained an aloof nod for his troubles.

":For those of my breed, :" said she, ":is there any other course? Good morn, Kalarin.:"

He echoed the sentiment at her back as she exited, and from there it was a matter of strides to the suite and the pearl-white shell of her plate, resting on its stand like a guardsman asleep at his post. She studied it for long moments, breathing in the silence, soaking in the last few moments she would have truly alone; in Silvermoon, there were eyes everywhere, and one forgot that fact at one's own peril. But Obsidian below scarce had his mistress's patience - she heard his shrill, metallic whinny from the shack at the base of the inn, and sighing, began the process of shrugging into her armor. When again she emerged from the suite, it was to gleam dull white in the remnants of the rising sun.

Tranquillien for the most part had roused by then, perhaps stirred by reminder of the stranger in their midst, perhaps merely coming to natural wakefulness with the morning hour; in any case, the Forsaken and Sindorei both had started their daily routines in a way that was so strongly reminiscent of Light's Hope that she suffered another twinge of her heartstrings. It was, she reflected, rather sad to realize that in her four years away from Silvermoon, the tiny bastion of the Dawn against the threat of the Scourge, whatever its flaws, had become more like home in the definition of her heart than the city of her birth had been.

But then, thought Annat as she paced round the inn towards Obsidian, there had never been anything other than her family to tie her to Silvermoon, and most of them were now fallen prey to fate. Only Hillex and Matthaias remained, young and vulnerable. They would be looking to her now, as the last family _they_ had left.

The Thalassian hellsteed, at the least, was pleased to see her again, if only because he knew that if his mistress was girt in steel, it was nearing on time for departure from this relatively serene place. Tranquillien remained well-named even after the coming of the Blight; perhaps nothing other than the coming of Prince Kael'thas himself could have disturbed the almost bucolic peace of the place. Bloodthirsty Obsidian lived in the moment, in the clash of blades and the crunch of bone. His tenure here in Tranquillien was uncomfortable reminder of what fate awaited him, should Annat follow through on her threat of an almost meditative stay in pasture.

More incentive than even apples, then, to behave as she bid him. Her smile gained cheer as she thought on the idiosyncrasies of her fireborn stallion, and with a few proprietary pats to ease the process, she saw about saddling the beast, fastening as much of the blood-copper barding as she could stand to see him wear, and securing the packs crost his strong back. He withstood the fussing with as much patience as he could be expected to show; by the end of the process, he was pawing the straw with one massive hoof, eager to be off, the near-complete suit of barding singing to his very soul of battle and destruction. Woe to any Scourge that dared the highroad and crossed destinies with Obsidian.

":I expect to reach Silvermoon by afternoon, :" noted Annat, smoothing the tack and saddlebags as much as could be done. ":Remember the apples.:"

He snorted; she took this as sign of acknwledgement, if not acquiescence, and his halter was loosed from the shack, replaced with bit, bridle, and spiked faceplate. That alone was enough to almost set the stallion to prancing, and she led him into the fading dawnlight, where he gleamed in the last gasp of morning before mist consumed the sun. He had been impressive the evening before, but now draped in spikes and armor he garnered the attention of every wandering eye - he knew it, and highstepped and threw his mane, putting on a show for those who watched him warily as she coaxed him into the street before the inn. Annat had to suppress the quirk of a smile when she saw their Forsaken friend from the previous evening unmistakably altering his path to give her and Obsidian wide berth.

Up into the saddle she legged, and with the barest tap of her heels to his sides, Obsidian bunched his muscles and leapt forward like an arrowshot, intentionally swerving to make a Sindorei in mage's robes - Arcanist Vandril, by the looks of him, though Annat hadn't the chance to study him properly - dive for the shielding barrier of the High Way's guard fencing. Though Vandril came through his emergency tumble unharmed, Obsidian sped on at a gallop, and earned a slap on the withers through the saddle for his cheek. _Obeying the letter of the law, not the spirit, _thought she, attempting to think it so hard that the horse might hear the rebuke; he continued in his merry way nevertheless, and once out of sight of Tranquillien eased his pace somewhat without needing instruction.

The further north travelled, the more the land betrayed subtle cues as to the nature of the region north of the Ghostlands; the ashen, gnarled trees began to show green leaf, the earth was gentled and bore fewer pockmarks from disease, the lynxes that prowled among the tall grasses were less grey than tawn - and those grasses themselves had begun to gradient into warmer shades, golds and bright greens and cheerful saffrons. Flowers began to bloom, no longer purple plagueblossoms but small, brave stands of brassy lillies, white foxglove, and even one shining example of the gold and scarlet flower called the King's Guard. Clumps of bloodberries too hid in the shadows of trees, and on one notable occasion, flourished openly under the strengthening sunlight, a lavish and optimistic sign of things to come. Obsidian would have veered from the path to nibble upon them, but a mindful tap against the blood-bronze sheathing his neck focused him once more upon the goal. Elrendar Crossing came swiftly upon them with the pace the charger kept; the river marked the boundary of the Ghostlands and Eversong proper, and the beginning of the true and untainted lands of the Sindorei, or more honestly, what was left of them.

After years of monochrome dullness, even a night in Tranquillien with its subdued hues did not prepare her for the glory of Eversong. The woodland was a riot of colour. Flora grew and tangled about the bases of the High Road's guardrails, gold and green and rust-red where the foliage had died back in favour of new growth. Sun-yellow bushes ringed slender tan trees or nestled in the roots of larger specimens. A great twisted firetree was there to greet them as they crossed the border, its leaves orange as a dawn at sea, and it was with only mild trepidation that Annat and Obsidian rode beyond it, crossing the Dead Scar where the High Road was bisected by it, the cobbles scattered islands of white in the sea of dead earth. The Scar hove east, even Arthas's armies unwilling or unable to chew through the foothills of the tall cliffs that protected the north of the Scorched Grove from the harshest of weather inbound from the western seas. The High Road at last parted for a time from the Scar, wending west, and Blood Knight and charger followed; they rode through the gaps in flaming barricades and the wreckages of wagon and ballista alike, and the Farstrider guardians set at this barrier hailed her with surprised cries, but she did not cease her progress nor return their calls.

Obsidian cantered on along the High Road, north and west, and one far enough from the Scar, it seemed that the Lich King had never touched this land. Golden motes of light or energy or both floated in the air like butterflies, alighting like dust from the sun upon objects or beings that stood still long enough to do so. Dragonhawks, the gold and crimson specimens that were native to these lands, explored the undergrowth in search of especially tasty insects. As the Thalassian horse rode onward and passed through the center of Fairbreeze Village, a place that made Tranquillien seem downright frenetic with activity, she saw a pair of Springpaw cubs tussling under a pennant bearing the banner of the Sunstrider Dynasty. The Sindorei clung almost obsessively to preserving the illusion of arrogant perfection, even though the former glory of Quel'thalas could never be regained. Realizing that it was a false vision did not accord one anything; that her people so lovingly maintained it said enough. Even years after they should have been motivated towards progression into the future, they held stubbornly to tradition and the false securities of the past. Annat, to contrast, had learned in the intervening years to trust her own safety to nothing other than her sword and the blessing of the Light.

_The more the world changes_, thought she, _the more it remains the same._

The light thudded dully in her chest, a warm, palpable sensation, and in fear she fought it down, spurred her mount further on.

The High Road took a more northerly bent and, depending on one's views, either gained a western tributary, or the way split off from its parent path seeking the distant coast; that way lay Sunsail Anchorage, she knew, too long a haven for the Wretched who had escaped the city and eradication. Though the boughs of the trees, interwoven in places to make hybrids of gold and red and maroon-purple leaves, obscured the sky, she knew Silvermoon drew close. In her mind's eye she saw the spires of the city, rising like the prows of a fleet of ships, straining to scrape the very heavens, to carve into the stars the name of her people and all that they had done... The windows of the spires, she knew, were inlaid with golden metal and rose-coloured glass, a fitting statement for a people possessed of an optimistic streak with a decidedly _narrow_ focus. There was only one such tower in the Farstrider Square, where the Blood Knights shared housing with their grudging ranger hosts, but she had climbed it often as a child and dared open the one tiny window, and for a moment she was lost in the tactile memory of the sprawling landscape of Eversong, the endless rolling carpet of trees and the distant, distant haze off the calling sea -

She shook free of the reverie, the sensation of height and distance so strong she felt stretched from fingertips to toes, and gently pulled Obsidian to a halt before the city gate. The High Road flowed naturally towards Falconwing Square, the original grand entry of the city proper; now it was home only to a staunch force of volounteers, they who served day and night among the ruins of their beautiful capitol, reminded constantly of the granduer they had lost when Arthas had marched and his army had cleft the city in two. The western half was nothing but a haunted remnant, housing maddened arcane sentries and those Wretched who had _not_ escaped the city for Sunsail Anchorage, contained there within the crumbling city walls, slowly destroyed, hunted down one by one. Common ghosts, of course; only the nobility need fear being shut in their ancestral home as captive blood elves bent on draining dry the arcane from anything they encountered, awaiting the newest Scion of their House to fulfill their ancient duty. The Wretched were not unique to the age after Arthas had come. They were merely more prevalent than ever - especially ironic, given the low numbers attributed the survivors of the Lich King's purge.

No. She would not visit those unpleasant reminders of her duties to come, even were it a fit entrance for the newest Scion of the High Court. The charger tossed his head and breathed a gasp of brimstone, his scarlet eyes brighter under the high sun than they had ever been in the Plaguelands; she tapped the right side of his neck, and obligingly, he turned, followed the branch of the High Road, this time at a relatively sedate pace compared to his previous loping clip. It was narrower, a thread of road in contrast to the rope that ran the length of Quel'thalas, hugging the base of the outermost wall of Silvermoon. Of course, along such a way, it must once more cross the Dead Scar, and here where Arthas's conquest had met the city wall the Scar thickened and bled into the white stone, clambering over the rubble that remained where once the barricade had stood, and continued unimpeded northward. A small contingent of the Farstriders was permanently stationed here, under the command of Ranger Jaela, and from a slight rise in the earth she and her band observed the paladin's passing; they did not hail her, and Annat did not call to them, instead sitting straight-backed in the saddle as they stared from the height, eyes welded upon her form as Obsidian trotted past.

The road eddied lazily in the shadow of Silvermoon, pooling about a small plaza that housed the tanners' outpost and Skymistress Gloaming, Sunwing's Eversong counterpart and sometime mistress, but Annat did not tarry there either. No sooner had she passed that the tanners abandoned their work to cluster together for rampant speculation, and Annat diligently ignored them as she had Jaela's band - merely the vanguard, the first few who would whisper and court the rumours that her mere presence would spark. The black horse picked his way along the road to the Shepherd's Gate, and through it they rode, the larger-than-life statue of Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider smiling benignly over them as they passed.

Their entrance could not have been timed better, for they walked opposite the flow of people returning from the High Court, all business of the day concluded, with clumps of Scions atop sleek, highly-bred hawkstriders pacing their way home, surrounded by small battallions of trained bodyguards. They spoke merrily amongst each other, discussing this tidbit or that rumour, his plans to go ahunting, her attempts to secure a magisterial husband, but as paladin and charger passed, all conversation ceased, and on any other day, Annat would have sworn to highest heaven that the stares she garnered were all Obsidian's doing. The Thalassian stallion was as good as his figurative word; he trotted prettily through the Walk of Elders, picking up his feet, swishing his tail, arching his neck, and in every way earning his apples. Brimstone roiled off of him in waves and his vermillion eyes glinted in the sun, the charger in his gleaming barding the very embodiment of war and all that it meant to meet a warhorse upon the battlefield. And, in good conscience, she could indeed attribute a few of those looks to his antics, especially among the spellbreakers of the city guard, and those retainers of the court who had only ever seen the legendary horses of the Blood Knights from a distance - but those who had walked among the High Court, ah, their eyes were all for Obsidian's mistress, a figure clad in pearl-white plate. Some felfire irises were wide in pale faces, where others were narrowed in cold calculation, or set in expressions purpled with rage. She kept her pale jade gaze forward, ever onward, deftly maunevering her horse through the traffic bound the opposite way, but noted what noble House had what reaction to seeing her face; the surprised ones she expected, but those who were moved to other emotions could yet prove dangerous to the vulnerable House Sunborn.

Annat Sunborn, filthy with dirt and muck from playing soldier in the south. How _unseemly_. She suppressed the curl of a lip in disgust at the thought.

Much like Eversong before it, Silvermoon had not changed much, if at all, in the years Annat had dwelled at Light's Hope; though she could only dimly remember its state before the Scourge had come, what remained was obsessively preserved and protected, upon pain of death (or at least grievous injury) under enforcement of the arcane sentries that yet patrolled its streets. The Walk of Elders, at least, matched up precisely to what few memories she had, of riding double with her father when she had not yet been old enough to manage Elise or Auri alone. Now she and Obsidian rode it with the spectre of Alaric Dawnblade galloping over their footprints, and idly she tried to admire the reds and golds and pale stone of the walls, but after the riot of Eversong hard upon the heels of years of monochrome landscape in Lordaeron, the profusion of colours made the threat of being struck with a migraine more likely than that of being struck with artistic appreciation. She had learned moderation amongst the Dawn. Her mother-people seemed, in light of those years in the Plaguelands, to have no concept of such.

The ancestral home of House Sunborn occupied a cul-de-sac at the place where the Walk of Elders and the Royal Exchange blurred and became one; it was not an expansive estate, as such, but it possessed several floors and space enough to daunt any common-born Sindorei and boasted of its own gated courtyard - which, though such was direly out of place in lavish Silvermoon, stood ajar and unattended. Obsidian knew the path, however, and smelling home he nudged the gates with his nose, swinging them inward upon the hinges just enough that his bulk might pass between them. The reason for such became apparent once they had crossed the marble-tiled courtyard, with its faerie-lights and potted firetrees. At the grand entryway, a tall, columned thing that framed the ancient ghostwood door of the house, stood blockaded by a quartet of spellbreakers, tower shields and glaives held at parade rest, impassive and implacable as a pair of blood elves attempted to argue with them. One was tall, a lithe young man in sleek leathers who sported a high, fluffy strawberry-blonde ponytail and a pair of swords canted across his hips. His companion was much shorter, of Annat's height, a red-haired priestess in white silk robes, her hair more a shade of burgundy than Annat's Sunborn scarlet. Both of them were immediately familiar to the paladin, and for the first time in two days she was genuinely pleased to see the faces of her own kind.

The argument was a one-sided affair; Kevyn and his sister Rastylin were bidding, vocally and quite vehemently, for entry into the barricaded House Sunborn, while the spellbreakers (no doubt culled from the infinitely patient Silvermoon City Guard) stood silent and unresponsive at their posts as the siblings grew more and more agitated. They and Annat had grown up together as playmates, they children of those who served in House Sunborn, she daughter of those who ruled it. Through unspoken, mutual agreement, she had not held their status over their heads, and they had done her the same. Though she had not seen them in four years, she recognized still the way that Kevyn moved, the lilt in Rastylin's voice. The responsibilities of adulthood could not alter them from who they were at their cores.

":You have _got_ to be kidding me!:" the priestess was saying as Obsidian picked his way delicately towards the entryway. ":Lady Sunborn's been locked up in there for almost a week! Annie _has _to have returned by now!:"

":Annie has indeed returned, :" said she from behind them, and gracefully she slipped from her mount as the siblings turned in utter surprise, ":but it's been many a year since last she was called that within Silvermoon's bounds.:" A smile. ":It does me much good to see you, Rasty, Kev.:"

":_Annie!_ You're back!:" Rastylin, dauntlessly daring Obsidian's wrath, fair leapt at Annat and nearly succeeded in toppling the paladin from her feet with the force of her greeting embrace.  
Kevyn, stepping forward in her wake, was somewhat more subdued in his pleasure at Annat's return, but the paladin caught him hiding a smile behind the fist into which he muffled a cough. Rastylin, once her near-throttling of Annat in her joy was complete, took the other woman by the shoulders and glanced her from head to toe, beaming brightly. ":You grew up when I wasn't looking! But if you're here -:" Rasty's enthusiasm flagged, ":- then you've heard about Lady Sunborn?:"

Annat nodded as she let her smile fade, carefully battening down the well of mixed anger and sorrow she had for the situation. ":Through my uncle, and I'm certain word is already spreading of my return. The tale is true, then?:"

":Every word of it and then some, :" growled Kevyn, and he folded his arms across his chest, shifting his weight to one leg. He towered over the two women, broad of shoulder and lean of muscle, wearing his leathers as though he were one born to them; when Annat had seen him last, he had scarce been her own height, a skinny scrap of boy with unruly hair and an attitude to match. The hair had grown long, and the boy had filled out, but the attitude remained almost comfortingly unchanged. ":We were there when she went berserk, and managed to clear the house out, got your brothers out as well. Now the spellbreakers have the estate locked up tighter than Liadrin's chastity belt.:" Rasty had the grace to look horrified at her brother's flippancy, but Annat only nodded once more.

":I take it you discovered such the hard way?:"

Kevyn flashed a crooked, somewhat rueful smirk. ":You know me too well, Annie. I was spotted trying to sneak in, but at least I had good reason!:" This last was directed angrily at the cadre of spellbreakers at the door, who suffered his wrath with stoicism. Annat frowned her eyebrows together as Obsidian stepped away from her, nibbling on a potted topiary while his mistress was distracted.

":What reason?:"

Rastylin opened her mouth to answer, but the reply never passed her lips; bursting through the open gate behind them in a whirl of panic-driven robes came a pale, black-haired woman, rather curvy for a Sindorei and taller than Annat and Rastylin by near onto half a foot. Of an average day, she was calm and collected, unusually even-keeled for her kind and one of the few that Annat trusted to keep her young brother out of trouble, but as Althiea Firedark rushed past Obsidian to throw herself into a prone position at Annat's feet, all thought of cheerful greeting was banished from the paladin's thoughts. ":My lady! Thank the sun, you're back!:" The warlock peered up at her through the fall of ravenwing hair, her felfire eyes enormous and vivid in her face, cheeks white from terror, though of what Annat was not certain. ":We feared - even I thought the rumours were true, that you had fallen in the south -:"

":On your feet, woman, I shan't kneel on ceremony, :" said Annat, mildly chiding, even daring the germination of a smile, and the Scion knelt, meaning to assist the warlock to her feet. ":It is quite unlike you to unravel so, Lady Firedark -:" But Althiea would have none of it; instead she clamped her hands onto Annat's, her skin clammy and cool to the touch, fingers trembling.

":Lady, your brother, :" blurted Althiea, ":he heard the tales that you would never return... He has been missing since this morning. I cannot find him no matter where I search - I fear he has gone into the estate to perform the duty of the Scion!:"

Annat stared at her for a long series of heartbeats, until finally, coughing, Kevyn said, ":_That_ reason. The spellbreakers won't speak to anyone but the Scion, but I have an _awful_ hunch.:"

The paladin flashed on the last image she had of Hillex, from four years previous: a stubborn and proud boy, with a mess of blonde hair, the robes of a warlock-apprentice, and a set about his jaw that implied that he would not be bowed by something so banal as grief for the impending absence of his sister and father. He would be closing on thirteen soon, but not quite yet, and was likely still proud and stubborn, but _far_ too young to face much of _anything_ -

It had been nearly a week since Gwynn Sunborn had become one of the Wretched, if Rastylin and the dates scribed upon the black-ribboned missive were in accord. Annat had not been seen in Silvermoon nor heard from since she had left as part of Alaric Dawnblade's band what seemed a lifetime ago, and she was sure there were many among the court who wished she never return. There would have been rumours. More, once Gwynn had turned and Val had vanished; maliciously hopeful things, whispers designed to further cripple the weakened House and its underage heirs.

And to a young, impressionable third heir, growled something within her that had awakened to the world of the High Court, what would that have meant if the second in line for the Scionhood were never to return?

Annat fair shot to her feet, leaving Althiea in a heap of limbs and limp robes upon the courtyard floor, and amidst echoes of surprise from the siblings ("Annie?" ":What are you -:") she strode towards the wall of spellbreakers, determination suffusing her features. The spellbreakers visibly retreated approximately half an inch in the face of her assault, bringing their great tower-shields and warglaives to bear, as though expecting her to attempt to barrel through them by force. When she stopped within arm's reach, they seemed mildly surprised. ":Spellbreaker!:" said Annat as forcefully as she could, addressing the closest of the quartet with her heart thudding in her chest. ":Do you know who I am?:"

He flicked his gaze briefly to one of his companions, his face utterly unreadable, before answering. ":Lady Annat Sunborn, the Scion of House Sunborn.:"

":Good. That will save quite a lot of time, :" she growled, her expression darkening. ":Was Hillex Sunborn let past this threshold into the estate of House Sunborn?:" When he did not answer immediately, she felt a whiplash of temper provoke her to raise her voice. ":_Well??_:"

":Of course, my lady.:" Annat's company sucked in a collective breath through their teeth, their worst fears confirmed, but the spellbreaker was as calm and unruffled as if she had asked him for the time of day, or the location of the nearest mailbox. It was infuriating, but thinking on it later, she supposed she hadn't been the first scruffy adventurer fresh off the horse to rant furiously at him or his corps. ":While Lady Gwynn Sunborn remains quarantined, only the members of the Noble House are allowed free egress in or out of the estate.:"

":You _will_ let me pass, :" and the hiss of her voice would have only been matched by the hiss of steel; very nearly was, as she found her hand upon the hilt of the Warblade sans the memory of having made such a gesture. At her back she heard the subtle clicking noise of a pair of swords being loosened in their sheaths, matched the sound to the image of Kevyn with his palms upon the pommels, extrapolated further to the picture of Rastylin with her hands half-twisted in preparation of calling upon the Light. Perhaps even Althiea was prepared to back Annat on her seige of the spellbreaker quartet, ready at a breath to scorch sigils of pain into the air that would draw forth shadow to match Rastylin's light.

The spellbreakers as a group seemed most uncowed and unimpressed, and their leader for the nonce did not so much as raise an eyebrow or bat a lash at the display. ":Violence will not be necessary, my lady, :" said he, utterly serene, ":but your friends may not accompany you. The sacred duty of the Scion -:"

":Yes, the sacred duty, I am _quite_ aware, spellbreaker!:" It was spat at his feet as though venomous, and if it had been a physical thing would have sizzled and eaten voraciously away at the marble beneath. "Anar'alah belore," she snarled, turning the Thalassian words into a blackest curse, ":haven't you the sense the sun bestowed upon a _turtle?_ You let a twelve year old boy past to duel with a _Wretched archmage!_:" From Val, Annat had expected the whistle of the wind between his ears and little else; from Hillex and the spellbreakers, she had hoped for better, especially in the case of her young brother, who ought to have learned some of Althiea's good sense by now. Even Kevyn had gotten _caught_ on his sneaking venture! Were _all_ the males of Silvermoon utter lackwits?

The spellbreaker, less than privy to her thoughts, was as placid and tranquil as ever. ":As he is a son of the Noble House, we are duty-bound to let him pass.:"

She realized then that she may as well have been shouting at a brick wall, for all the good it would do her; the spellbreakers and their Guard brethren were chosen specifically for their mild, irenic temperaments, and though it might have made her feel better to rave at them as though she were a madwoman, she hadn't the time to do so - and suspected, with a thundering heart, that neither did Hillex or her mother. Annat carefully took a measured, calm breath, unwound her tightened muscles, clamped down on her agitation, swallowed as much of her anger as she could stomach. It was much like binding all hell with a hair, but when she spoke again, she managed a tone approaching something like civility. Her hand remained loosely upon the Warblade. ":I am Annat Sunborn, the _Scion_ of House Sunborn. You will let me pass.:"

That, it seemed, was finally enough, and the spellbreaker quartet each glanced at the others before parting like leaves before the gale. She took a step then, meaning to storm the gates of her own household, but there came a soft touch at her elbow and she whirled, almost snapped, contained herself at the last moment. She found Rastylin there, Kevyn and Althiea at her back, but it was Kevyn who spoke, looming tall over the shorter women. ":You can't go in there alone, Annie.:"

":I've little choice. Tradition demands.:" Annat shook her head, glanced away from them and their hopeful faces, especially the desperate, hungry need for a saviour that graced Althiea's features. The charge Annat had set her to mentor lay beyond that threshold, and only Annat could rescue him from whatever fate he had entangled himself into; the responsibility weighed shockingly heavy on her shoulders, the knowledge that if Hillex was not yet beyond saving, that it would only be her own fault if she failed in the endeavour. ":If I do not return, you are _not_ to come after me. Seal up House Sunborn and never open it again. Am I understood?:"

They nodded, her ragged band of followers, silent, pensive. Rastylin reached and touched her cheek, feather-soft, and she spoke a Power Word to bolster her fortitude. It tasted like fire and light upon Annat's tongue, and she saw through the slight haze about the edges of her vision that tears threatened in Rastylin's eyes. ":Go with our blessing:" said she. ":We pray you find him alive.:"

":As do I, Rasty.:" She spared a brief embrace for the priestess, gathering her courage before it could abandon her. ":As do I.:"

A breath then, a still moment as she prepared herself mentally for what she might find beyond the doors of the estate, and then before the breath left her she turned and broke from her allies, dashing through and past the spellbreakers, to the ancient ghostwood door, and before she had entirely slipped through it, the quartet had closed rank at her back, barricading Rastylin and the others outside - and blockading Annat within.

The message was very clear: once the threshold had been crossed, she was entirely on her own.

Annat locked the ghostwood door with its heavy platinum bolt, and loosing the Sindorei Warblade from the scabbard on her back as she went, she strode into the depths of the ruined House Sunborn and never looked back.


	5. House Sunborn

_"I write now from distant Lordaeron to the south and west of our homeland; Doomhammer's Horde threatens us all and so the disparate nations of Arathor have joined together here in the King's halls, forming pacts and strengthening alliances. King Anasterian sent our small band to their aid as a mere token gesture, but I confess that in the presence of the Lightbringer and his kin I feel a calling, as if some force of the Light works upon my very soul to draw me to it. Mehlar feels this call as well, and though we are now lowly troops in our King's army, we shall soon seek permission of the Alliance and Uther Lightbringer to study the ways of his Order. A mere green soldier cannot marry a princess of a Noble House, my love - but perhaps a Paladin of the Light, baptized in war, can. Should I survive this campaign and see my ambition realized, I shall return home to ask for your hand in marriage. Wait for me." _

- Alaric Dawnblade, in a letter to his beloved, Gwynn Sunborn, written shortly before the opening skirmishes of the Second War. Excerpted from_ The Sunborn Correspondences._

* * *

The ancestral home of House Sunborn lay in utter ruin, and the futher Annat probed into the wreckage, the more apparent the extent of the destruction became. The foyer beyond the heavy ghostwood door was only the merest taste of what lay beyond. Tables and other furniture had been overturned. Tapstries and other wall-hangings were ripped from their moorings, slashed as though with wicked claws or in various states of disarray. An ancient painting of the founder of the bloodline, Prince Kaian Sunborn, had been torn from its place on the wall and thrown into a messy heap of canvas in one corner. No flame lit the wall-sconces and even the glowballs, the dim faerie-lights that hovered placidly on every street and in every home had gone out, their essences snuffed, or perhaps drunk dry. Even the floor beneath her feet was cracked and uneven, as though the House's very foundations had suffered an upheaval of the earth.

The grand entryway was a similar exercise in destructive disrepair; once it had been truly grand as the name implied, a wide curved staircase serving as the focal point of the area leading up to a landing on the second floor, all formerly done in scarlet carpet and golden trim. It had been a hub of activity once, the nexus through which one accessed the areas of the House, but no more. After Gwynn had become one of the damned, the area had been decimated, wrecked. The carpet was blackened in places, gone in others, dark ruddy red in any case; the landing appeared host to a barricade of debris, the first-floor doorways to the other areas of the home darkened, damaged, and promising more horrors beyond. Even the decaying chandelier looked as though it had not been tended in years, even though Annat knew it could not have been more than a span of days.

_The aura of a Wretched's home,_ she thought dismally, scanning the wreckage of her childhood. There she had fallen once and sprained her wrist as a child; there she had played hopscotch in the patterns cast by the setting sun... _Their descent into madness and decay affects their very belongings._

She had hoped it would never come to this, but in truth, it was only a matter of time when concerned with the elder members of the Sindorei. Annat had taken her father's death hard, but Gwynn in Silvermoon had taken it hardest of all; the daughter was then hardly surprised when the mother became somewhat unhinged in the wake of his passing, and the only surprise was how the Lady Scion had managed to remain stable _enough_ for so long.

Still, the duty should have been Val's to execute. Her jaw hardened at the thought, for truly, that was the essence of the Scion's Sacred Duty; it was more tactfully called a rectification by the high court, a word which implied something wrong that needed mending, but left the imagination to fill in the gaps beyond. Whatever one named it, however, the result would be the same. A Scion entered a quarantined estate, either to slay their Wretched predecessor and assume the seat of power within the Noble House, or never to return. Entire bloodlines had been lost when the heirs apparent had been unable to overcome their parent.

The system was inherently flawed, but very demonstrative of the Sindorei state of mind. Pride first in all things, even in the murder of their forebears.

There came noise then, a soft whuffling sound, and movement from the upper level. Annat was drawn from her thoughts then and ascended the stair, three steps at a time with the Warblade in a two-handed grip, only the afternoon light trickling in from high, half-barred windows to illuminate her way. The debris as she drew closer revealed itself to be the half-destroyed hulks of furniture from elsewhere in the house, haphazardly thrown together to form a barricade that blocked off the central hallway of the landing, which was lit with a flickering fel light. That one led to the inner family suites; the other two, one to each side, lay darkened. Rastylin and Kevyn claimed to have gotten everyone out of the estate when Gwynn had gone mad - simple logic, then, to determine where Gwynn now lay in wait.

Hillex would be there as well. Time was wasting.

After a breath, she took a single step towards the barricade, and was promptly dealt a nasty surprise in the form of a hulking blue-black shadow, lunging for her much like the Scourge will yaw for living flesh. The dim light winked off of its armored gold bracers, but before the brain could intervene the body was reacting with the kind of speed and violent efficiency that was ground into one's bones through service in the Plaguelands. The slash cleft one of the bracers in half on the first mighty swing, scattering green gems and pieces of hammered gold across the landing, and the Voidwalker reeled back from the blow, making the kind of whining sound one might hear from a kitten the size of the Royal Palace. It seemed to look at her as thought hurt and insulted by the gesture, holding its shadowstuff arm to itself, and as she watched the limb reformed before her very eyes. The pieces of the shattered bracer vanished into dust, but did not reform upon the wrist.

Adrenaline still sang through her frame, but she relaxed her mental choke a notch. ":Mezz'thu. You startled me.:" Hillex Sunborn was considered something of a child prodigy among the warlocks, like his mother had been among the magisters; he had practiced unknowingly the trade of demonology long before he had been old enough to pronounce its proper name. His first imp servant had been beckoned to hand before he had reached his third birthday, and the Voidwalker had been called into existence at seven. There were pacts and bindings in place, of course, things that forbid the harm of the members of House Sunborn that thus rendered Mezz harmless to her, but its unintentionally looming presence at the landing was alarming all the same.

":Ssssisssterr, :" it hissed, and the white blobs that marked what she assumed were the demon's eyes bobbed in recognition. Good. Annat had always thought that demons, even lesser fiends like Obsidian and warlock familiars, were supposed to be highly intelligent, and while she could not deny that Mezz'thu was a thinking being, she had always wondered quietly if perhaps it had been able to be bound by such a young warlock simply because it was rather slow in the head, even for a Voidwalker.

It nodded said head ponderously, as if agreeing with itself, then pointed a naked arm towards the ominous stretch of uneasily-lit corridor. ":Masssterr, :" said Mezz, helpfully. ":I... go.:" And that was all the warning she was given before the beast gracefully ascended the makeshift barricade. It was gliding beyond into the storm-lit corridor well before she herself could tackle the barrier, clearly intent upon leading the paladin to its master.

She had to pry one hand free of the Warblade's hilt before she could climb across, and with a will she set to the crossing, eyes raptly tracking Mezz in between finding places for her hands and feet. A climb was a mild way of putting it, however; it was less that than an awkward hybrid of wading and high-stepping through the wrecked chairs, the remnants of tables and couches, and she more fell than landed when she had at last pulled herself free of its haphazard mass. Mezz was well-down the corridor, and though she would have hurried after to catch up with the demon, the Light bloomed warmly in her chest and made her pause -

The thought shot across her mind like lightning that the blood-pact that prevented Mezz from harming _her_ would also have rendered the Voidwalker unable to so much as raise a finger against Gwynn Sunborn, if the Scion had truly gone mad. It had been loitering hopefully in the landing, vigilant for the spectre of aid, because it could do _nothing_ to defend Hillex against the Wretched being within.

Ahead of her in the corridor lit by what Annat would have called the undead shades of glowballs, feral, diseased-looking spectres of green demonlight that hovered shakily at ankle and eye level, Mezz'thu passed the open doorway of what would have been her parents' suite. In the demon's wake a bright blue frostbolt shot forth without warning, clipped the jamb and deflected to graze mistreated Mezz along its unarmored limb. There was a moment where it stood dumb and looked blankly a moment down at the frost-rimed arm, much like a man would upon being shot, before it shrugged off the blow and plodded out of the line of fire. Its great head was weaving back and forth in a manner that much reminded Annat of a hawkstrider bereft of its mate, absent only the agitated, anxious keening.

":Sending _demons_ after me now, Rommath?!:"

The voice was sharper, somewhat cracked at the end, distorted, but unmistakable; even swiftly followed by maniacal female laughter and a hail of ice from the doorway to plaster the opposing wall in sparkling blue, it bounced its harmonic across every bone in Annat's body like a bard caressing harpstrings. There are some hidden switches that only a mother can tap. The assault on the innocent wall continued after a pause for breath, adding further pockmarks to what was already a battered patch of stone. It hadn't been the first such volley.

":You'll have to do better than _that_ to conquer _me,_ you old fool!:" cackled the insane voice of Gwynn Sunborn, raining icy destruction through the doorway in a veritable hailstorm. ":I am _power incarnate!_ I _am_ the arcane! How _dare_ you challenge _me,_ _I who hold the very reins of all creation!!_:"

More pelting of the beaten stone, at somewhat more random and crazed angles. Deep within her mind, in a place where neither the infectious warmth of the Light nor the deep-seated chill of her fear could reach, a cynical piece of Annat found voice and thought, _Oh, Mother. You always did have a flair for the dramatic._

She resumed the double-hand grip upon the Warblade and began a cautious, balanced walk down the hall, Warblade leading, ready either to sprint into the fray or bolt for the safety of the barricade - even she wasn't quite sure which. ":It isn't Grand Magister Rommath, Mother!:" she called ahead of her, willing her voice to preternatural evenness. ":It's Annat!:"

The volley ceased; the spectres of hope seized Annat's heart as she made careful way down the corridor, but Gwynn ground them under her maddened heel. ":Very clever of you!": answered the magistrix, almost manic in her cheerfulness. ":Attempting to fool me with illusions of my children! The first try with your false Hillex failed, Rommath! Do you think me so foolish as to believe such tripe with the voice of my daughter instead?:"

Annat's blood turned to slush in her veins as her forward movement ground to a halt, and though it was a foolish thing to say, she could not prevent the trembling words from escaping. ":What have you done with Hillex, Mother?:"

":Besides, :" continued Gwynn blithely on, as though the paladin had not spoken, ":my Annie is only a little girl, not a grown woman. You'd think that part you'd have correct, at least, Rommath.:"

The distinct, woodsy scent of burning wood and the accompanying crackle of flame reached her senses then as the archmage abruptly changed tack. Cursing, Annat dove forward as the blastwave demolished a section of wall immediately flanking where she had been standing only heartbeats before, certain she had been singed if not outright set ablaze. She landed in an awkward sprawl an arm's length from the suite doorway, her grip on the Warblade lost, sending it skittering and scraping to rest gently against the gently-smoking column that formed the base of Mezz'thu's great cobalt trunk.

Annat had time to push herself up, muscles resisting the combined torture of gravity and plate armor, and put her back to the stone wall before there was a rain of arcane missles to either side of her, through both the suite door and the new entryway that Gwynn's pyroblast had so recently renovated. These made visible pockmarks in the opposing wall, and arms up to shield her head, Annat felt M'uru's Light thunder in her chest in time with her heartbeat, a pounding she could taste in the back of her throat, and the naaru's siphoned power swelled so strong in her in that moment that everything in her vision left tracers of white and gold -

The missles stopped; there came a dreadful silence from the suite. Then: ":Perhaps you _aren't_ Rommath, :" allowed the mad Lady Gwynn, ":but whoever you are, you have a taste of _power_ about you... more power than _this_ brat, at any rate!:"

There were strident footsepts and a sickening thud, and then a whimper, a high-pitched sound of pain as though a puppy had been kicked.

A puppy, or a young boy -

Annat quashed the terror that threatened to hold her immobile, glanced to the right, to Mezz'thu. The Voidwalker was almost tamely brushing frost from its arm, the Warblade's intrusion into its space only mildly insulting and for the most part, ignored. It lay glittering beyond the gap of the doorway, however, and may as well have been a mile; she would get only one chance for it, and if she was unlucky or Gwynn accurate, Matthaias would soon be the last Sunborn in Quel'danas.

The Light shuddered in the back of her mind, almost a precognizant warning, and hard upon its heels came another abrupt change in the atmosphere. There was a palpable shiver, the greenish faerie-lights shaded blue, and the cold sweat on the back of her neck froze to meet open air; when the first ice lances fell from (and in places _through_) the ceiling, she hauled herself to her feet through sheer force of will and threw herself across the open doorway, narrowly avoiding impalement on a chill spear, the implement instead shattering upon the floor. Ice shards and water flew everywhere, misted the hallway and her immediate vision, slicked her palms and the pommel of the Warblade so that it was a small miracle that the two found each other and held fast.

Mezz endured the impromptu shower with astounding dignity and grace, where Annat was merely soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone. Teeth chattering, she stared at the Voidwalker in astonishment, then shook her, head, focused again upon the goal.

What was in her favour? Gwynn would try to clip or injure her, not outright destroy her - a dead Sindorei had no innate arcane energy to tap, no magic to drain, and Annat was a direct line to the source of power for every Blood Knight in Azeroth. The magistrix had well and truly cracked, and was hopefully unable to plot anything beyond satisfying her immediate hunger. And even archmages were, as Bettina had once put it, squishy.

Not much advantage on any court, especially if Gwynn blasted her to Kalimdor before Annat could close with her and put an end to the confrontation. But, she thought as she watched and waited for her opening, either her crazed mother would whittle her down one spell at a time until a mistake was made that could not be recovered from, or she pushed her luck _now_ and did something drastic, before the last few grains of sand in her brother's figurative hourglass ran out.

Alaric's daughter chose the latter, and when the ice lances saw the briefest of lulls in their crashing down to earth, she seized upon the chance, drawing on the captive naaru as much as she dared to wreathe herself in wisps of golden energy. Through the open doorway she dove - she caught a confused glimpse of the suite in utter disarray, in as shabby and disheveled a state as the rest of the home - and then she had Gwynn in her sights, the magistrix's arms upraised, fingers twisted like the upper reaches of a gnarled tree, caught in the throes of the magic as much as in the casting of the spell itself. She was haggard, grey-fleshed, green crystals rising like boils from her skin to freckle her face and arms; her cheeks were hollow, limbs gaunt, the voluminous sapphire robes of her former office that had once made her look elegant and windswept now tattered, filthy rags that enhanced the appearance of unnatural gawky thinness. The Sunborn scarlet hair remained, true, but it was lank and bore an oily sheen, a cloud of crimson tangles framing eyes gone huge and pupilless, as if the viridian colour had wholly consumed the whites. Slowly her gaze descended from the heavens to lock upon Annat, the paladin stopped dead in her charge of the magistrix.

And oh, how those eyes _burned_ in Gwynn Sunborn's face, burned as though Kil'jaeden himself had set fel bonfires ablaze in the sockets. There was very little that could be considered Sindorei left in those poisonous green irises, and a moment after she saw the ecstasy and raw, bleeding hunger Annat was rudely introduced to it, felt it as if Gwynn had slammed into her bodily. The ghost of the racial addiction stirred from its careful slumber and lifted its great head, hearing the call, rumbling with a _hunger_ that no mortal power could ever satisfy -

_No!_ There would be _no_ reenactments of her nightmares this day. She drew upon the Light without thought or permission, smothered the rapacious and insatiable part of her soul in the holy energy of the naaru's being, stamped out its gluttonous passion before it could truly waken unto itself. It left a dull aching in its wake, once again locked away, and if M'uru felt insulted that Annat had taken by force what was necessary to shackle the hunger once again, he gave no sign of it, then or ever.

But precious seconds had been lost as Annat struggled with herself, and Gwynn had her now in her sights, the ice lances losing her attention, left to soak and rime the hallway and the powerless Voidwalker cowering in it. The magistrix tilted her head, smiled a crooked, manic smile, her eyes mismatched in size. ":Power, :" she purred, and she pressed her palms together under her chin, fingers interwoven, as though smitten with adoration... or lust of a very specific, very Sindorei kind. ":I... _want_ it!:"

Purple curls of energy began to float like smoke from her joined fingers, and Annat, shaking free of her momentary paralysis, bolted forward. The Warblade led the charge, and with a cry she hauled the greatsword round, meaning to cleave Gwynn in half if she could -

But Gwynn smiled an almost happy grin, and disappeared -

_Bleeding_ Blink _spells!_ snarled Annat inside her own mind, but she could not cease the momentum, spun on her toes a half circle before the Warblade could be brought to a halt, now facing the way she had come. Her mother was in the doorway now, giggling almost hysterically as fire bloomed beneath the paladin's feet, the flamestrike spitting molten embers into the air and sizzling with steam where the water from the lances met the red-hot marble floor.

Annat threw herself out of the upward rain of fire, one boot leaving a footprint in the heat-softened stone where Gwynn's spell warped it, and when she found herself having skidded some distance to the side in a stable kneel, Warblade in hand, she assumed the ragged pile of purple fabric to her right to be curtains torn from the walls - at least, until it moved feebly and mewled like an injured kitten.

Hillex. _Alive!_

But not for long, if Annat fell prey to Gwynn's magic. Hope surged within her and gave her the strength to stand again, and when the first arcane missile flew to seek its target she was braced for the impact. The magic shuddered through her frame, as much pain as pleasure, but the salvo did not stop her, and forward strode she, eyes narrowed. She freed a hand, reached out towards Gwynn, twitched a muscle in the back of her brain that defied explanation to those not of the Sindorei, and there was an audible hissing _snap_ sound as a measure from the innate well of magic in Gwynn's soul was drawn and met open air. The flavour of the arcane was indescribable, but much like how the paladin imagined soda water spiked with stars.

Gwynn _shrieked_ and bared her teeth in indignant, evil rage at the paladin's brazenness. ":You _dare!_:" she howled, her features even more drawn and feral-seeming than before. ":You insolent wench! _I'll drain you dry!!_:" And she curled her hands into claws and her teeth became fangs, wisps of smoke rising from her fingers now; Annat intended not to allow her the time to think, much less finish the spell, even with her Wretched-imbued speed and shattering of the laws of safe arcane practice. Forward she rushed, into the maw of the dragon, and just as she thought she might feel its breath or the bite of its icy fangs she expelled the foreign mana forcefully from that place in the back of her mind. The torrent of energy broke like a pale wave between her and Gwynn, a tide that heralded a vacuum - and blessed, eerie silence. The smoke vanished, the crackling ceased, and to Gwynn's utter incomprehension, the spell failed.

Annat pressed the advantage, and it was only the speed of her transformation into shunned Sindorei monster that saved Gwynn then; one mighty swing, a second, and Gwynn evaded the fatal blows, weaving and giving up ground into the ruined hallway. Then sound returned, and with it fury, strong and strident. The breath of the dragon found the paladin then, heat scorching and blackening her armor, searing her face and setting her sense of direction on its ear. The hall spun wildly in her vision as she struggled to make sense of the sudden carousel of her surroundings, and only the sharp pain in her chest that heralded a turning of her tactics upon herself anchored her to a world based upon the rules of physics.

Back in her place in the room, Gwynn was laughing shrilly, a sound like a file rasping away pieces of one's sanity just to hear it, and there was a distinct undercurrent of joyful destructive malice even in the supposedly-innocent sound of molten lava rising to the archmage's call. No more playing games - no more aiming to incapacitate. Gwynn's already mercurial motives had shifted to intent to kill, and Annat was rooted in place, unable to react in time. She saw almost in slow motion the great ball of flame as it was called into being and laboriously formed.

The pyroblast was easily the size of a small pony when it was finally launched. Annat screwed her eyes shut, the Warblade rising like the bladed prow of a ship more out of knee-jerk reaction than any usefulness, and she spat a Word that sang with Light and fire and etched golden words across the insides of her eyelids. The blast impacted harmlessly at the outer wall of her divine shield, much to Gwynn's incoherent fury, and when the paladin dared open her eyes again, the magistrix was readying a counterspell to sever Annat briefly from the bottomless well of M'uru's power. That, they both knew, would end Annat's irritating presence here as well as her ability to defend herself - the power did not have to be suppressed long for it to be suppressed long _enough._

Annat scrambled to think, staring her own doom in the face. But then, something unexpected happened; a single black bolt of energy, drifting almost aimlessly through the air, found a mark in the center of Gwynn's back as she was casting, and the magistrix shrieked, reacted without thinking. The Blink sent her into the fiery wake of her disippated pyroblast and inside the reach of Annat's sword, for a split second vulnerable, disoriented. Annat struck without thought, before preemptive grief could halt her blade.

The Warblade took her in the gut, and Gwynn's already wide eyes grew huge in her face. She choked, and Annat, bile rising in her throat, pushed forward and _up_, twisting the blade, causing horrid and irrevocable damage; the archmage gurgled and stared at her as though such a fate were inconceivable, and that surprised look remained on her face even after she had collapsed on the floor, breathed a ragged sigh, and life fled from her.

It would have been easier if she had bled simple scarlet lifeblood. Annat could have handled that - she had seen many of her comrades die in the Plaguelands, the fate of her father, Haiduc and the Dayhearts nonwithstanding. But the fluids of Gwynn Sunborn's body had, in the transformation into one of the Wretched, metamorphed into blue liquid mana; this was what now soaked the body and saturated her robes, pooling in the flame-warped marble and leaking from her mouth.

Knees shaking and unfit to hold her, Annat released her locked muscles, dropped the Warblade to let it clatter to the marble, and retched on all fours there next to the fresh corpse of Gwynn Sunborn. The remainder of Kalarin's breakfast had vacated her stomach when a shadow passed across her prone form, and looking up, Annat saw Mezz'thu lumbering across the suite, hurried as much as the great blue beast could be. She followed the track of its beeline and saw, much to her great relief, Hillex on his side on the floor, panting heavily with one arm thrown out across the stone, one eye swollen shut and the other blazing viridian under a sheaf of sun-blonde hair. His warlock trainee's robes were a mess, and Annat did not want to contemplate what sort of injuries lay beneath the cloth, but he lived.

":You saved me, :" said Annat, wiping her lips with a hand. She could rinse her mouth of the taste of vomit soon enough. Hillex tried to shrug in classic preteen disinterest from his slump on the floor, putting up a front far braver than any twelve year old boy had a right to - he flinched anyway and curled in on himself a few degrees, a cascade of pain responses set off by the simple gesture. Mezz'thu hovered over him in agitation, desiring to help its master, but unable to divine how to do so; demons were not exactly caring or tender beings.

":I saved us both, :" panted Hillex through the spasms, as Annat knee-walked her way over to her brother. She touched his hair gently, a sisterly gesture; he made a face at her but did not wince away from it, if only by virtue of the fact that to do so would inflict more pain upon himself.

":That was a very brave thing you did, facing Mother:" said she, smiling the smile of those who are determined to see the silver lining. ":Very foolish, :" she added, ":but very brave.:"

":I didn't think... that you were ever coming back.:" The sentence was segmented, each packet of words forced out between ragged breaths, and he glanced away from her, unable to meet her jade gaze. She stroked his hair away from his face, partially to soothe him and partially to reassure herself with the knowledge that he truly had survived.

":One can hardly blame you.:" A pause, a breath. ":Lady Firedark is beside herself with worry.:"

":Lady Firedark thinks -:" His words cut short with a sharp intake of breath as Annat bent to lift him in her arms, the fabric pooling about her hands and blood pooling in the young warlock's shadow. Her stomach lurched again, but Annat staunchly ignored it and the Warblade laying still on the half-melted stone. Hillex spoke again once he had regained his breath, when his sister had come to her feet with him in a princess-carry, and there was an indignant, pouty undertone to his voice. ":Lady Firedark thinks I'm merely a child.:"

_Ah_, thought Annat. ":A child is one primarily by virtue of acting like one.:" The first few wobbling steps were uncertain, but growing steadily assured as she adjusted to Hillex's weight. The boy was far lighter than he should have been, the fabric of his robes sticky in places, and she dared not think on it in detail until he was seen by a healer.

He eyed her as shrewdly as one could with one eye swollen closed under an angry bruise already shading towards black. ":And what does that _that_ mean?:" But Annat's smile was serene; she forced it so, clambering over the furniture barricade as gracefully as possible. Hillex flinched and squelched a whimper when her foot slid across a turned wooden chair leg, a hairsbreadth from sending both Sunborns tumbling over the barrier, but Annat recovered her balance with an effort and marched onward.

":It means precisely as I said, and nothing more.:" He huffed at the delicately evasive answer, but chose not to argue with her phrasing. Down the wide, curving stair, Mezz'thu a cobalt shadow in the paladin's wake; upstairs the fel light fueled by Gwynn's madness was slowly dying, like embers left to snuff themselves under their own weight, and the journey was thus made only by thin streamers of afternoon light still leaking in from high above. They picked their way across the floor and under the decaying chandelier, but when Annat drew close to the massive ghostwood door, Hillex twined his fingers in his own robes, prompting her pause. ":Yes?:"

":You're... you're the Scion now, right, Annie?:" He would not meet her gaze, instead tipping his head forward to hide it among the thatch of sun-blonde hair, but the voice was of a little boy lost and not the adult he so desperately pretended to be. He trembled and strove to hide it, shock or fear or both setting in, and the smile that curved his sister's mouth was tinged with sadness. He had not called her by her pet-name since he was old enough to resent being patronized by his elders, and she would not begrudge him of it now, nor tease him on it later.

But she could sense what he wanted, and tipped her head as well, to touch her brow to his. Her words she dropped to a whisper, her lashes she dropped to veil her jade eyes. ":Yes. I am the Scion now. And that means I will take care of you, and Matthaias, and Lady Firedark and the Summerblazes, and all others who serve under the banner of House Sunborn. Mother and Father are gone to whatever fate awaits them, and Val -:" She stumbled, grasped for an appropriate lie, Hillex need not yet know that their eldest brother had eloped with a Kaldorei huntress, ":Val is gone into the wild. You and I and Matthaias are all that's left, and while I swear I will not abandon you, we all must be strong for each other. I trust you to guard my back at court. Can you do that for me, once you've healed?:"

He sniffed surreptitiously and nodded, a fractional movement, and if he ever thought twice of her momentary fumble, he never parted with the knowledge. She smiled a wan, defeated look that was more a grizzly grin than anything else, and pressed a kiss to his forehead through the tangles of his hair. Before her courage or her strength could abandon her, she risked dropping her brother just long enough to throw open the heavy platinum bolt on the ancient door and shoulder it open, to stagger out into the dazzling brightness of the sun.

Things happened altogether quickly after that; there was a cacophony of voices and a swirl of bodies and motion, and questions asked and perhaps answered, and guiding hands and brave offers, but the paladin would not relinquish her brother to the care of any other. Though she bore no memory of such, she _must_ have been helped into the saddle, for at one point Annat was certain she was ahorse with Hillex in her arms with his head tucked under her neck, Obsidian stepping merrily through Silvermoon's city streets. The hellsteed was suspiciously optimistic and well-behaved, the tempting honor guard of the Dayheart siblings and Althiea Firedark well within nipping range but yet unbitten, and Annat was certain as well that there had been mischief afoot whilst she had dueled mad Gwynn Sunborn in their ancestral home; but all concerns faded from her as the procession reached Farstriders' Square, and a much larger, waiting escort.

Word of her arrival, it seemed, had rippled outward both forward and back, the paladin's presence disturbing greatly Silvermoon's natural order; the company awaiting on the Blood Knights' doorstep contained far too many members of disparate circles to have been cohesive for very long. Several healers of the paladin and priest variety were present, eager to work their talents upon Hillex Sunborn, as well as a small cadre of spellbreakers to keep the peace, myriad Blood Knights bearing shields strapped to their backs or great Warblades of their own under the watchful eye of Knight-Lord Bloodvalor, and several magisters and magistrixes, colleagues most likely of Gwynn before her madness.

Annat struggled to sweep her gaze across every face present, to look regal and commanding as a newborn Scion ought, but only those she already knew stood out with any clarity, the visages of others hazing over, fading whitely away into the morass of memory. It helped not that M'uru's light was so _loud_ here, so brightly beating in her chest in time with her calming heart, mere dozens of feet from where the naaru was held captive and all of Annat's mental boundaries lowered of her own will - necessary, in order to survive the battle with Gwynn, but now the paladin wondered, dimly, if survival had been worth the exposure.

She thought the naaru laughed then, if the tarnished-windchime sound she associated with the Light could be considered laughter, and the edges of her vision feathered pale.

Kevyn and Rastylin worked to gently coax her from Obsidian's back - their words seemed muffled and unintelligible, as though Annat had stuffed wax in her ears, and could not make themselves understood beyond a simple impetus to move forward. Bloodvalor spoke once and made grand gestures, and Blood Knights of all talents swirled and eddied about them, a sea of blades and black and scarlet tabards, pressing them onward with the force of their presences as much as of their wills, though none were so brazen as to risk Obsidian's bridle with their breakable fingers. The spellbreakers looked on with impassive, judgmental faces as Lady Firedark blockaded the coterie of archmages from sweeping down upon the procession with their stridence and their questions.

She stumbled once, only once, before Kevyn snatched Hillex from her arms and spirited him away to the company of healers waiting in a group to the side. Rastylin shored her up and would neither let her fall nor let her pursue her brother; her burden taken from her and the end within sight, Annat acquiesced at last to exhaustion, allowed the light trespassing in her vision to whitewash the world. It was done; the battle was over.

The _war_ had just begun, but for now, head bowed to her chest and the Light singing through her soul with a melody both painful and lovely, Annat Sunborn rested.


End file.
